Today’s elections in Iraq could determine how much longer our troops stay in Iraq. It is possible — likely, I suspect — that the government formed today will pressure us to evacuate, “victory” be damned.

Anton La Guardia and Oliver Poole write for the Telegraph:

Three men, all of them Shia, are seen as a possible prime minister: Adel Abdel-Mahdi, of the main Shia religious faction, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI); Iyad Allawi, a former London exile who served as Iraq’s first interim prime minister last year; and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the current prime minister and head of the religious Daawa party.

One of the first tasks for the new government, which will rule for four years, will be to agree with US and British officials the procedure for a gradual hand-over of power to Iraqi forces.

There are signs that the Shia coalition that presently dominates Iraq could break up over the issue. SCIRI and Dawa want the US presence to continue for some time but they have now formed alliances with Moqtada al-Sadr, the militant cleric whose followers have fought with US and British troops and who demands the immediate departure of the “occupiers”.

Dexter Filkins writes in the New York Times that the votes will probably split evenly between secular and religious Shiites:

The cleric-led Shiite coalition is expected to get the largest number of votes but to fall short of capturing enough seats to enable Adel Abdul Mahdi, the group’s probable nominee for prime minister, to form a government. The Shiite coalition won a slim majority in the January elections, choosing Ibrahim Jafaari as prime minister, but the expected participation of the Sunni Arabs makes it unlikely that the Shiite bloc will capture a majority this time.

Juan Cole discusses the Sunni part of the puzzle:

The LA Times probably reflects the thinking of a lot of Americans in hoping that these elections are a milestone on the way to withdrawing US troops from Iraq. I cannot imagine why anyone thinks that. The Iraqi “government” is a failed state. Virtually no order it gives has any likelihood of being implemented. It has no army to speak of and cannot control the country. Its parliamentarians are attacked and sometimes killed with impunity. Its oil pipelines are routinely bombed, depriving it of desperately needed income. It faces a powerful guerrilla movement that is wholly uninterested in the results of elections and just wants to overthrow the new order. Elections are unlikely to change any of this.

The only way in which these elections may lead to a US withdrawal is that they will ensconce parliamentarians who want the US out on a short timetable. Virtually all the Sunnis who come in will push for that result (which is why the US Right is silly to be all agog about Fallujans voting), and so with the members of the Sadr Movement, now a key component of the Shiite religious United Iraqi Alliance. That is, these elections lead to a US withdrawal on terms unfavorable to the Bush administration. Nor is there much hope that a parliament that kicked the US out could turn around and restore order in the country.

Thomas Oliphant writes in today’s Boston Globe about President Bush’s recent “cycle of orations” on Iraq:

Bush loved to trumpet the fact that elections were about to be held and then will trumpet the fact that they were indeed held and people voted. But his unwillingness to discuss the elections in depth undercuts the message he is attempting to convey.

In this case, what was missing from Bush’s final oration yesterday was even a minimally broad tour of these elections. He could have at least tried to explain that because these are parliamentary elections involving multiple slates of candidates, it is possible, indeed likely, that we will not understand what happened because Iraq is so bitterly divided.

He could have urged calm and caution as Iraqis of multiple political persuasions try to sort through the tea leaves in search of some kind of majority that has a chance of actually governing the country. He could have emphasized the need for caution even more by explaining that this mystifying process could take weeks if not months and may at times become violent.

Instead, his orations at an end, he will pack up and hide for most of the next three weeks at Camp David and in Texas while others try to make sense of what is likely to be one of the messiest elections ever.

This is Bush’s pattern: To take credit for an “accomplishment” (that may not have been accomplished yet) and then leave the work to others. Oliphant continues,

The reason for the mess, by the way, involves the last so-called ”milestone” that was promoted and then trumpeted by Bush — the elections 11 months ago for an interim government and the October referendum on the constitution that this government produced.

The baloney from our government and president celebrated democracy and consensus across the regions and sects. The reality was division, actually enshrined in the constitution under which Iraqis will vote this week. Rather than heal the society, the constitution cemented its divisions in place. One of the dirty little secrets that his advisers leak to the press all the time, a secret Bush seems incapable of acknowledging, is that there is nothing to prevent virtual independence in the Kurdish North and virtual theocracy in the South –a recipe for chaos in and around Baghdad. The other dirty little secret is that the first task of whatever government is formed will be to figure out a way to change this wretched constitution so there remains at least a dim possibility of allowing freedom to exist under its amended provisions.

Bushies care more about the talking point than the reality. Yesterday in his speech he said, “We set four major milestones to guide Iraq’s transition to constitutional democracy: the transfer of sovereignty, elections for a transitional government, the adoption of a democratic constitution, and elections for a new government under that constitution. In spite of the violence, Iraqis have met every milestone — and this is changing the political landscape in Iraq.” I heard this same talking point repeated by various rightie surrogates on the cable news shows yesterday.

Last week we learned that Bush insisted the Iraqis meet the milestones no matter what, which is why the Iraqi constitution is such a mess. The August 15 deadline for writing a constitution, in particular, was “met” by declaring the constitution to have been written and agreeing to actually write it later. And the way the U.S. shoved the process forward had the effect of further alienating the Sunnis and further fueling the insurgency. The one that’s killing our soldiers, BTW. Juan Cole wrote,

In my view, though, it was crazy to attempt to write a permanent constitution in only a couple of months, and the Aug. 15 deadline should have been extended for 6 months. As it was, the drafting process became very messy toward the end; people barely knew which language they were voting for in the referendum; and the Sunni Arabs rejected the constitution almost to a person. It was a very bad outcome, and if Iraq breaks up we will almost certainly trace the break-up to the rush to get the constitution drafted and the way in which the Kurds and Shiites stacked it with goodies for themselves at the expense of the Sunni Arabs.

But getting the constitution right was less important to the Bushies than meeting that milestone. They wanted that talking point. A missed deadline would certainly have turned into a talking point for the Dems leading up to our November 2004 elections.

Gotta keep our priorities straight, you know.

Several news stories this morning say the voter turnout is high, even among Sunnis, so expect victory celebrations on the Right for the remainder of the week. And it really would be best for all of us if the Iraqi government turns out to be able to govern, as opposed to being a failed state. But what the righties don’t understand is that nothing substantive has yet been accomplished. There may yet be a good outcome from Bush’s “democratization” of Iraq, but it could be years before that outcome becomes tangible.

And it’s a crapshoot. The odds are that, sooner or later, Iraq will devolve into civil war or become a satellite of Iran. Meanwhile, our troops continue to die, and we continue to spend about $6 billion a month in Iraq while the needs of U.S. citizens go unmet for lack of funds. And as long as we are there the insurgency will continue, but Bush is too wrapped up with himself as Democracy Jesus to let go of his glorious little war. We’re stuck there until 2009 or the Iraqis kick us out, whichever comes first.

So let’s hope the elections today will result in a working government that refuses to be a Bush puppet. It may be up to the Iraqis to save us from ourselves.

See also: Harith al-Dari, “No elections will be credible while the occupation continues.”

Update: See also Steve M.

The London Times reports that UK and US troops are fixin’ to begin a pullout of Iraq at the beginning of 2006.

Richard Beeston and Stephen Farrell in Baghdad and Michael Evans in Basra write,

BRITAIN and America are planning a phased withdrawal of their forces from Iraq as soon as a permanent government is installed in Baghdad after this week’s elections.

In a move that has caused alarm in the outgoing Iraqi administration, American and British officials have made clear that they regard the end of Iraq’s two-and-a-half-year transitional period as the green light to begin withdrawing some of their combined force of around 170,000 troops as early as March. …

…The moves appear to run contrary to statements by President Bush and John Reid, the Defence Secretary, who insist that coalition forces will not “cut and run” and will stay until the mission in Iraq is complete.

Indeed, in his speech today, Bush said,

We are pursuing a comprehensive strategy in Iraq. Our goal is victory. And victory will be achieved when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq’s democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks against our nation.

… or by the end of 2006, whichever comes first.

BTW, I really liked this part of today’s speech:

I’ve come to discuss an issue that’s really important, and that is victory in the war on terror. And that war started on September the 11th, 2001, when our nation awoke to a sudden attack.

Like generations before us, we have accepted new responsibilities. We’re confronting dangers with new resolve. We’re taking the fight to those who attacked us and to those who share their murderous vision for future attacks.

We will fight this war without wavering, and we’ll prevail.

The war on terror will take many turns, and the enemy must be defeated on every battlefield, from the streets of Western cities, to the mountains of Afghanistan, to the tribal regions of Pakistan, to the islands of Southeast Asia and to the Horn of Africa.

Yet the terrorists have made it clear that Iraq is the central front in their war against humanity.

So we must recognize Iraq as the central front in the war on terror.

That boy’s still tying 9/11 to Iraq. He ain’t givin’ up.

He presented a slightly different angle during the question-and-answer session:

QUESTION: Mr. President, I would like to know why it is that you and others in your administration keep linking 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq when no respected journalists or Middle Eastern expert confirmed that such a link existed.

BUSH: What did she – I missed the question. Sorry.

I beg your pardon. I didn’t hear you. Seriously.

QUESTION: I would like to know why you and others in your administration invoke 9/11 as justification for the invasion of Iraq when no respected journalists or other Middle Eastern experts confirm that such a link existed.

BUSH: Oh, I appreciate that.

9/11 changed my look on foreign policy. I mean, it said that oceans no longer protect us; that we can’t take threats for granted; that if we see a threat, we’ve got to deal with it. It doesn’t have to be militarily necessarily but we got to deal with it. We can’t just hope for the best anymore.

So the first decision I made, as you know, was to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan because they were harboring terrorists. This is where the terrorists plan and plotted.

And the second decision – which was a very difficult decision for me, by the way, and it’s one that I didn’t take lightly – was that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He is a declared enemy of the United States. He had used weapons of mass destruction. The entire world thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations had declared in more than 10 – I can’t remember the exact number of resolutions – that disclose or disarm or face serious consequences.

I mean, there was a serious international effort to say to Saddam Hussein: `You’re a threat.’ And the 9/11 attacks accentuated that threat, as far as I’m concerned.

And so we gave Saddam Hussein the chance to disclose or disarm. And he refused.

And I made a tough decision. And knowing what I know today, I’d make the decision again. Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country.

Are we making sense yet?

I missed it. Didn’t know he was giving one today. The li’l booger just snuck right past me and gave a speech without my knowing about it. Well, eventually somebody will post a transcript.

Update: Word is that the theme of today’s Iraq speech was spreading democracy over there so we don’t have to spread it here …

Update: Here’s a transcript of the questions-and-answers section of the speech, which is slightly more interesting than the speech itself.

Also: Dan Froomkin has a follow-up to the Bubble story.

Here’s another chapter in the continuing saga, “How We Screwed the Pooch in Iraq” —

Peter Baker and Robin Wright write in today’s Washington Post that while President Bush refuses to consider a withdrawal timetable for Iraq, he has been rigidly following a timetable for building a democratic government in Iraq.

When U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer transferred sovereignty to Iraqi authorities in June 2004, he left behind a script with hard-and-fast deadlines for drafting a constitution and forming a government, a script that culminates Thursday with another election for a permanent parliament.

The story of the 18-month process that unfolded after Bremer left Baghdad was one of steadfast fidelity to the script, as well as a costly period of U.S. inattention and endless frustrations with squabbling Iraqi leaders, according to a wide array of Bush advisers, Iraqi politicians and others involved in the effort. While Bush refuses to set a timetable for military withdrawal, he has stuck doggedly to the Bremer political timetable despite qualms of his staff, relentless violence on the ground and disaffection of Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs.

Bush’s deadline democracy managed to propel the process forward and appears on the verge of creating a new government with legitimacy earned at the ballot box. His approach resulted in a constitution often described as more democratic than any in the Arab world. Yet by pushing forward without Sunni acceptance, the Bush team failed to produce the national accord it sought among Iraq’s three main groups, leaving a schism that could loom beyond Thursday’s election. And the Sunni-powered insurgency that was supposed to be marginalized by an inclusive democracy remains as lethal as ever.

The Bremer timetable was not the administration’s first choice. Rather, it was forced on Bremer and his staff by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s majority Shiites. The idea behind the timetable — a reasonable idea, IMO — was to allow the Iraqis to take the lead in the democratization process. And, Juan Cole writes,

The article neglects to mention a key factor in holding the Jan. 30 [parliamentary] elections on time, which was that they had been demanded by no later than that date by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He would not have accepted a delay, and would have brought the Shiites out into the street to protest if one were attempted. Bush could not afford to alienate Sistani at a time when the Sunni Arabs were already in revolt.

But the rest of the Bremer schedule — the August 15 deadline for completing the constitution, the October 15 deadline for a national referendum on the constitution, and the Dec. 15 deadline for yet another parliamentary election — could have been adjusted. Juan Cole continues,

In my view, though, it was crazy to attempt to write a permanent constitution in only a couple of months, and the Aug. 15 deadline should have been extended for 6 months. As it was, the drafting process became very messy toward the end; people barely knew which language they were voting for in the referendum; and the Sunni Arabs rejected the constitution almost to a person. It was a very bad outcome, and if Iraq breaks up we will almost certainly trace the break-up to the rush to get the constitution drafted and the way in which the Kurds and Shiites stacked it with goodies for themselves at the expense of the Sunni Arabs.

When Bremer left Iraq in June 2004, after the “transfer of sovereignty,” he was replaced by John D. Negroponte. Negroponte chose to take a back seat in the democratization effort — not an unreasonable decision, given that our official position was that Iraqis were now in charge of Iraq. But in fact the democratization process sputtered and stalled once the U.S. was no longer driving it. And after Negroponte left Iraq in March 2005 to become national intelligence director, four critical months went by before President Bush got around to appointing his successor. This was in spite of the fact that news stories from March 2005 were already naming the likely successor, Zalmay Khalilzad. Khalilzad didn’t get to his new job in Baghdad until July 2005, just a month ahead of the deadline for writing a constitution.

… the Afghan-born envoy had to get up to speed and found a jumbled situation as constitutional negotiators bogged down.

Under the Bremer timetable, they had until Aug. 15 to forge a compact resolving the most divisive issues in the new Iraq, such as the role of Islam and rights of women. Sunnis wanted the constitution to preserve a strong central state, while Shiites and Kurds were determined to carve out or preserve autonomy in their regions. But the Sunnis had no cohesive organization; Khalilzad would receive a list of demands from one faction, then a contradictory list from another.

As the deadline approached, Bush and his advisers meeting at his Texas ranch once again were consumed with the same debate as in January — whether to break the schedule to craft a deal that would satisfy the Sunnis.

Bush, who instinctively dismisses doubters and abhors changing course, again stuck to the plan. “We’ve got to keep the deadline there to force the parties to make the hard decisions to reach compromise,” Bush told advisers, according to Hadley.

With Khalilzad shuttling between parties, Bush delved into the talks personally, calling Shiite leader Abdul Aziz Hakim. “You’ve got to agree to some things that the Sunnis need to come into the process,” Hadley remembered Bush telling Hakim.

This time the deadline passed without agreement. The interim Iraqi parliament just before midnight amended the transitional law to allow more time. It took two more weeks, but over gallons of tea at late-night sessions, the Shiites and Kurds did reach a deal — bypassing the Sunni Arabs.

Those four lost months seem critical now. Why were they not critical then? Can anyone remember what was going on in March, April, May, and June that prevented Bush from making a timely appointment? Oh, wait … the Bamboozlepalooza Road Show was going strong until the first of May. But in May and June his schedule didn’t seem so challenging that he couldn’t have found time to pick up a phone and order Khalilzad to Baghdad. But even though he failed to make a timely appointment, Bush insisted that everyone else stick to the schedule.

To keep to the script and preserve the sense of momentum, the Bush administration had finessed the deadlines, punted the hard choices to the future and gambled that the Sunnis would continue to participate.

“The one single worst mistake was the rigid, shortsighted adherence to the August 15 deadline,” said Jonathan Morrow of the U.S. Institute of Peace, who advised constitutional drafters. That “had consequences for Sunnis buying into the constitutional text. . . . It’s a hopeless situation and it’s progressively more difficult to remedy.”

Juan Cole writes,

Personally, I don’t see any signs at all that this political process has had an impact on the Sunni Arab guerrilla war. And in the Shiite provinces, it has so far ensconced the Shiite religious parties and their paramilitaries (leading to a certain amount of torture and assassination by the security agencies, which are infiltrated by militiamen.)

The parliamentary election scheduled for Thursday will elected a (hopefully) permanent government in Iraq. Indications are that more Sunnis will participate than in January, and if that turns out to be the case the Bushies will whoop it up and call it a major success. It will be a long time before we know how big a success it was, of course. And if violence in Iraq continues, American voters probably won’t see much success at all.

Steve Holland reports for Reuters,

Euphoria over past elections has quickly evaporated in a cloud of violence. Experts said a decrease in Iraqi violence was more critical than elections in turning around American opinion.

Marina Ottaway, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the January and October elections did not lead to a higher degree of approval for Bush and doubted Thursday’s elections will do so either.

“There will have to be something much more tangible on the ground,” she said.

Yesterday I blogged about all the little, um, details Bush left out of his vision of a glorious march to victory in Iraq. Here are more.

Bush described wonderful progress in the city of Najaf:

Najaf is now in the hands of elected government officials. An elected provincial council is at work drafting plans to bring more tourism and commerce to the city. Political life has returned and campaigns for the upcoming elections have begun with different parties competing for the vote.

The Iraqi police are now responsible for day-to-day security in Najaf. An Iraqi battalion has assumed control of the former American military base and our forces are now about 40 minutes outside the city.

A U.S. Army sergeant explains our role this way, “We go down there if they call us and that doesn’t happen very often. Usually we just stay out of their way.”

Residents of Najaf are also seeing visible progress and they have no intention of returning to the days of tyranny and terror.

One man from Najaf put it this way: “Three years ago we were in ruins. One year ago we were fighting in the streets. Now look at the people shopping and eating and not in fear.”

Or maybe not. Alaa al-Morjani and Sindbad Ahmed write for the Associated Press:

Najaf is a largely peaceful Shiite city 100 miles south of Baghdad that has not suffered from the sectarian attacks ravaging other parts of the country. But rivalries between Shiite factions have occasionally become violent, and many complain that militant political parties and militias dominate city government and security forces.

On Sunday, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited the Imam Ali shrine, among the holiest in Shiite Islam, and was attacked by a crowd that forced him to flee in a hail of stones and shoes. Allawi called the attack an assassination attempt. …

… In his speech Wednesday, Bush alluded to the expulsion of Sadr’s militia from the shrine last year.

But the militiamen who were from Najaf never left the city. They just stopped carrying weapons around the shrine area. In the summer, a fistfight in Najaf between followers and opponents of Sadr triggered battles throughout southern Iraq between the cleric’s supporters and followers of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major party in the ruling Shiite coalition.

Funny, Bush didn’t mention any of that.

Robin Wright and Saad Sarhan write in today’s Washington Post:

In a tale of two cities, President Bush yesterday heralded progress in northern Mosul and southern Najaf as new models for rebuilding Iraq.

But last Friday, Iraq’s government imposed emergency law and a curfew in Sunni-dominated Mosul and throughout Ninevah province, and a senior U.S. official in Baghdad yesterday referred to the city of about 1.7 million as “nasty Mosul.”

And James Glanz writes in the New York Times,

President Bush on Wednesday cited a teaching hospital in Najaf as perhaps the top example of a successful rebuilding project in Iraq. Since the American-led attack against local militias leveled large portions of Najaf in August 2004, however, the hospital has been most notable as a place where claims of success have fallen far short of reality.

During two visits to the hospital by reporters for The New York Times over the past year, the most recent in late summer, work on refurbishing it had been limited to largely cosmetic work like new ceilings and lighting and fresh paint. Critical medical equipment was missing and the upper floors remained a chaotic mess.

Numerous Iraqis at the site said the hospital had not been ruined by the militia that occupied it during the 2004 fighting, but instead by looters who entered after the American military left it unguarded after the battle.

Next: WTF?

Update: Check out today’s Dan Froomkin column:

Some American journalists intent on fact-checking President Bush’s vision of Iraq are finding it too dangerous to inspect the areas Bush yesterday cited as models of success.

Which sort of tells you the story right there.