Iraq 2003 invasion booster Kenneth Pollack has a new plan (Wall Street Journal) to help Iraq. Basically the US should help PM Nouri al-Maliki blow up lots of stuff if Maliki agrees to a 7 point program of new laws and constitutional amendments. Among the highlights --
The biggest reach of all, but also the best thing for Iraq: a constitutional amendment that redefines Iraq's executive authority, with security and foreign affairs under the president, and the economy and domestic politics under the prime minister.
Leave aside that the PM calls his ruling coalition the "State of Law." So what was Kenneth Pollack's past (2005)view of the effectiveness of legal and constitutional restraints in Iraq? --
But Iraq under Saddam Hussein and his predecessors also had a "perfectly fine constitution" that had "no bearing on the conduct of the state," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former Bush and Clinton administration staffer now at the Brookings Institution Saban Center.
The biggest reach of all, but also the best thing for Iraq: a constitutional amendment that redefines Iraq's executive authority, with security and foreign affairs under the president, and the economy and domestic politics under the prime minister.
Leave aside that the PM calls his ruling coalition the "State of Law." So what was Kenneth Pollack's past (2005)view of the effectiveness of legal and constitutional restraints in Iraq? --
But Iraq under Saddam Hussein and his predecessors also had a "perfectly fine constitution" that had "no bearing on the conduct of the state," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former Bush and Clinton administration staffer now at the Brookings Institution Saban Center.
UPDATE: Pollack has apparently been saying similar things about a weapons-for-constitutional-amendments deal directly to the US government.