[Mb-civic] Bush's Risky Intervention - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Bush's Risky Intervention

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, August 28, 2005; Page B07

PARIS -- While President Bush was telephoning an influential Shiite 
leader to lobby for changes in the new constitution being written in 
Baghdad last week, Iraq's terrorist forces were busy targeting electric 
power lines in the countryside. Their priorities of destruction reveal 
how the terrorists intend to win the war they wage -- and how they can 
be countered.

Bush called Abdul Aziz Hakim early Thursday, Iraq time, to express 
concern about three issues: women's rights, delaying bringing a new 
federal system into effect and softening rules under which ex-Baathists 
are excluded from government jobs.

These changes, Bush said, would increase the chances of the constitution 
being accepted by Iraq's Sunni minority. Shiite and Kurdish leaders 
agreed late Friday to accommodate Bush by amending the draft they had 
written earlier last week, according to Iraqi sources in Baghdad.

Most important, the Shiites and Kurds agreed that they would let the 
parliament that will be elected in December decide on the laws 
determining the scope of autonomy to be given to Shiite and Kurdish 
regions under a decentralized federal government, just as Bush asked.

However successful or well-intentioned, Bush's tardy intervention on 
behalf of the Sunnis risks emboldening the ex-Baathists and foreign 
jihadists who stoke the rebellion in the Sunni-inhabited areas of Iraq. 
Until now, they have shown relatively little interest in constitutions 
of any kind.

But the insurgents have made the sustained targeting of infrastructure a 
major part of an increasingly sophisticated campaign to destroy public 
confidence in the Iraqi government. The rebels want to reinstall 
terrorism as the governing principle of Iraq and prevent free votes on 
the constitution in mid-October and for a new government in December.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/26/AR2005082601487.html
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