RIVERBEND Girl Blog from Iraq... let's talk war, politics and occupation.

Baghdad Burning

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Draft Constitution - Part I...
I’ve been reading and re-reading the Iraqi draft constitution since the beginning of September. I decided to ignore the nagging voice in my head that kept repeating, “A new constitution cannot be legitimate under an occupation!” and also the one that was saying, “It isn’t legitimate because the government writing it up isn’t legitimate.” I put those thoughts away and decided to try to view the whole situation as dispassionately as possible.

It was during the online search for the *real* draft constitution that the first problem with the document hit me. There are, as far as I can tell, three different versions. There are two different Arabic versions and the draft constitution translated to English in the New York Times a few weeks ago differs from them both. I wish I could understand the Kurdish version- I wonder if that is different too. The differences aren’t huge- some missing clauses or articles. Then again, this is a constitution- not a blog… one would think precision is a must.