White House Disarray Over Iraqi Election

The Bushies are in total disarray over the Iraqi elections. It's just like everyone keeps quoting a different number on the Iraqi security forces that are fully trained -- anywhere from 22,000 to a couple hundred thousand depending on the speaker and the time of day.

The Iraqi elections WILL be held in January says Bush and his Iraqi lackey Allawi. And everyone will vote and everything is going fine.

The Iraqi elections will be held in January says Rumsfeld and of course there's so much violence that 20% or more of the Iraqi people may not be able to vote and that's just fine.

Now, the second in command in the State Department flatly contradicts Rumsfeld and says, no, it ISN'T fine to hold elections where a huge chunk of the population can't vote. Those are what's known as illegitimate elections that won't foster democracy in Iraq or legitimacy for the government anywhere in the world.

And as Steve Clemons points out on his blog, there will be virtually no election monitors in Afghanistan and no one is even talking about election monitors in Iraq. Again, by the basic standards of a functioning democracy, that means both of these elections will be illegitimate in the eyes of the world.

The Bushies are way off message and contradicting each other every day in a Keystone Kops manner. Wanna bet this latest blip is a small bit of revenge by Colin Powell?