David,

You really need to get your facts straight before you climb up on a stump and start pounding your chest. The percentage of Sunnis who voted against the constitution was in the 90s. Don't you think they knew how to count votes over there, before ballots were even cast? The election rules were set up to give the appearance of giving the Sunnis a real voice (which they would not have on a straight up-down vote), but the deck was stacked. It came out exactly the way the current Iraqi government expected it to.

If you are suggesting that I am complaining on behalf of the Sunnis, I am not. I really don't care which one of these endlessly bickering groups has power in Iraq. As a country it is going to fall apart no matter which group has power. We were stupid to get involved in the first place. We have not established a beachhead of democracy in the Middle East, as our government told us in 2003 before the invasion. (A story they have stuck to despite all evidence to the contrary). We did not find any WMD, which our government told us we would. About all that has changed in the past 2 1/2 years is we have created a red-hot arena for terrorists that did not exist before. That and 2000 dead American soldiers, and countless dead Iraqis (military and civilian), and the toll still climbing with no end in sight. "Mission accomplished" my a**.


>Mike,
>
>>...The rules were that three provinces had to reject the constitution by a two thirds margin for it to fail. This was carefully based on ethnic percentages in all the provinces. Some are mostly Shiite, some (far fewer) are mostly Sunni, and some are mostly Kurds. Only a few are mixed, including the one that rejected the constitution by only 55-45. The whole vote was a sham.
>
>Unbelievable conclusion, Mike. The whole vote was a sham, huh, although they specifically gerrymandered the rules to give the Sunnis am affirmative-action-style fighting chance to torpedo the entire thing. Unfortunately for those who led the opposition, enough Sunnis voted FOR the constitution to approve it.
>
>Of course, they could have just patterned the system on our electoral college system, or even just made it a strict majority vote instead of leaning over backwards to make it easier for it to be voted down.
>
>It's too bad that so many people think that all Sunnis were against this, when clearly many of them voted YES.