Sunnis Reject Iraq Constitution, Bush Threatens Violence

Last week Bush warned, "We can expect ... atrocities to increase in the coming months because the enemy knows that its greatest defeat lies in the expression of free people in freely enacted laws and at the ballot box."

The term "enemy" is ominously ambiguous, and the Bush administration knows something about this already as the electoral process so far has led to an Iraq now sympathetic, if not inter-related, to the hard line Islamic government in neighboring co-"Axis of Evil" member Iran. And ironically, the US has been applying pressure lately to the Shiite Kurd alliance to refrain from steamrolling the Sunni opposition, but at home has been doing to the opposition exactly the type of steamrolling that they are advising the alliance against.

Much of the Sunni distaste for the proposed constitution comes from what they see as unfair petroleum profit distribution, and they will have an opportunity in October to reject the constitution and start from scratch. That is, if "atrocities" do not keep them from the polls.

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