Bush's Occupation Team "thought you said mid-WEST"; Unleashes the political madness of Iowa onto unsuspecting Iraqis
The UN report on the future of Iraq is out. According to WaPo, report author and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi:

"said the first steps would be establishing an independent electoral commission and reaching agreement on election laws. That, he said, could be completed by late April or early May if U.S. and Iraqi officials get busy. Those moves would allow elections to be held eight months later."

Excuse me? If they get busy? What have they been doing all this time? If our plan hasn't included "election laws," what--you ask--has our plan been all about? Apparently we thought nothing would stoke a virgin democracy like a good caucus:

"The United States had hoped to create a provisional government through a complex system of 18 regional caucuses, a plan that did not gain support among Iraqis. {ed: shocking, that} The caucus system, Brahimi wrote, is 'not a viable option,' and U.S. officials 'themselves accept that it would be impractical to try and implement this system which is totally alien to Iraqis.'"

The most important, I'm guessing damning, fact to know about that progression is how long did it take us to get from that "plan" to that "accept(ance)"? I wish thinking about things like whether a system is "totally alien" were one of those things we got to earlier. While we're at it, can we fire whoever argued that it's not a true democracy until the Iraqi Steak Fry (hosted by Tom Harkin!) is up on C-Span 2?