Never happy

Paul McGeough, the Sydney Morning Herald journalist whose unending pessimism about Iraq has received a fair bit of attention over at Tim Blair's, continues his dire predictions today.

It seems to me that his analysis is very unlikely to be original. To quote:

" This is a Clayton's constitution - a conflicted, contradictory unity bill for a country tearing itself apart, accepted in a vote dictated by the fault lines of Iraqi history.

Here are some of the elements of the constitution that mock notions of national unity and invite civil war."

And he goes on to talk about various aspects of the constitution that he thinks are likely to cause problems.

Now, I know that copies of the constitution are available, but I really doubt that McGough is making these judgments just on his own reading and analysis. His pronouncements are too dogmatic, too neat. For example:

"Laid out in its separate parts, this is a document that denies the very notion of Iraqi citizenship."

But if he is following some other commentator's or academic's line, he doesn' t acknowledge it.

I think he must be a fan of this site (Al Jazeera.com, which is not the same as the Al Jazeera TV network, nor Al Jazeera.net, which may or may not have something to do with the TV network. I wish these guys could come up with better product differentiation.) I had mentioned the .com website some time ago. It is rabidly anti-Bush, anti-Iraq constitution, and gives every conspiracy theory the light of day (although with comments allowed after articles, which usually does attract a lot of rebuttal.) Their take on the new constitution is here. The key paragraph:

"It seems that Bush'’s admin has finally found the solution: "Divide Iraq" and then pit the three mini states created against one another. It's not the first time something like this happened."

Al Jazeera.com is based in Dubai, apparently.

Anyway, time for some optimism please.