The problem with giving people the right to vote is that they might actually take voting seriously and ruin all YOUR nice plans
by JON CARROLL, SF Chronicle

I went to see "9 Parts of Desire" at Berkeley Rep the other evening. It's an uncomfortable evening of theater, not least because it's an uncomfortable subject: Iraq both before and after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and more specifically the role of women in Iraq. Here's the short form: The news ain't good.

Of course, given the amount of money that American companies are making in Iraq, and the amount they're skimming off the top even before the record profits, it may not entirely be true that American invaded Iraq to promote democracy. There is oil over there -- it's become unfashionable to mention that, but I'm gonna go all wide tie and mention it anyway.

..... Which means that the Iraqi democracy is stable only because American contractors need a stable Iraq to maximize cash flow, and as soon as they go away, the Iranian-backed Shiites will take over and we'll have a really nasty theocracy with a soupcon of ethnic cleansing. And Iran will have nukes, but we won't invade it because, as it turned out, we didn't really have the army to invade Iraq, a far easier mark.

And then we'll ... well, I dunno. I don't think the administration knows either. The election of Hamas is not a situation it wanted or, I'm guessing, planned for. It seems mighty darn ungrateful of the Palestinians, after all we did to push the government of Israel to the peace table. But it may be that our invasion of Iraq pretty much trumped everything else we did in the region, and for all I know Hamas will announce that it plans to keep the cease-fire with Israel but declare war on the United States. Stranger things have happened.

Full story here.