Dispatches from the War Fronts:
U.S. GIVES UP
IRAQ SEARCH
By Henry Cabot Lodge
Diplomatic Correspondent with
Douglass MacArthur
War Correspondent
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After over two years of effort, the Bush Administration has announced that it has given up the search for democracy in Iraq.
Bush thinks he sees Iraqi democracy somewhere to his left
The news follows widespread skepticism that democracy in Iraq would ever be found, despite numerous protestations by senior Bush Administration officials, and the President himself, that U.S. armed forces would uncover democracy in that strife-torn land.
During the lead-up to the U.S. led invasion in early 2003, the administration claimed on many occasions that it had "indisputable evidence" that democracy would be found in Iraq as soon as Saddam Hussein was overthrown. However, after spending over $300 billion dollars and sacrificing close to two thousand Americans (not including the tens of thousands with serious and in many cases permanent injuries), Bush Administration officials finally admitted that the search for democracy in Inaq had turned up nothing.
Early U.S. efforts to locate Iraqi democracy were limited to the vicinity of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who claimed that he had it in the jacket pocket of his Savile Row suit. However, shortly after Chalabi was airlifted into Baghdad by Donald Rumsfeld, the wily criminal [Which one? – Ed.] said that he must have left it "in his other suit."
This led the U.S. to conduct a mammoth country-wide search for Iraqi democracy and democracy-related program activities. Task forces were dispatched to Kurdistan to track down credible reports of Iraqi democracy but instead found only a poor relation, Kurdish tribal rule.
U.S. teams were then rushed to the south of the country to search Basra and the southern marshlands for any signs of Iraqi democracy. While they found a huge stockpile of previously-unknown Shi'ite theocracy and behind the scenes Iranian influence, U.S. forces failed to unearth even a hint of democracy.
Hope that Iraqi democracy would be found flared anew during last winter's elections to the Iraqi National Assembly. However, a Sunni election boycott, Shi'ite religious intolerance and Kurdish desire to secede obscured any possibility of uncovering Iraqi democracy.
In recent months, the Administration has backtracked from his optimistic pronouncements that Iraqi democracy would be found soon. More recently, Vice President Dick Cheney, fly-fishing at his undisclosed location, said that "democracy-like institutions" would be uncovered shortly.
Speaking on background, Administration con artists [Surely, neoconservatives? – Ed.] explained that a de facto Kurdish republic in the north, an Iranian-dominated Islamic republic in the south, and an oppressed Sunni minority in the midsection of the country were "related to democracy in important ways."
Asked how the decision by a rump majority of Shi'ite religious extremists and Kurdish separatists to adopt a federal constitution by fiat over the objections of the Sunni minority and secular Iraqis could be termed "democratic," President Bush affirmed that America would honor the fallen by continuing the war against terrorism in Iraq.
Bush searches for Iraqi democracy under his loafers.
But Administration spinmeisters may soon have another embarrassing lacuna to explain away. Over the last two years, President Bush and his lackeys have stated repeatedly that they have discovered evidence of "progress" in the prostrate country.
With violence endemic and the country apparently about to collapse into warring thirds along religious and ethnic fault lines, some Washington insiders believe that the Administration will soon have to give up the search for progress as well.
The only bright spot, according to Iraqi experts, is that the search for terrorists in Iraq "is likely to be very successful. Just drive three feet outside of the fortified Green Zone and you'll find some."
Volume CCXXXV, Number 91 September 1, 2005
