I actually shared a class with Abdullah in grad school at Gtown (he wasn't king then). Seemed like a nice enough guy, smart. Anyway, he not only announces that the situation in Iraq is "far too unsafe" to hold elections, but he raises a new wild card: That if we hold the elections, THE EXTREMISTS WILL WIN.
Cool, so we might get that kooky fundamentalist Islam state in Iraq after all, and all because of George Bush.
From Reuters:
Iraq is far too unsafe to hold elections as scheduled in January and extremists would do well in the poll if Baghdad tried to hold it, Jordan's King Abdullah said in an interview to be published on Tuesday.
Excluding troubled areas from the nationwide poll would only isolate Iraq's Sunnis and create deeper divisions in the country, he told the Paris daily Le Figaro according to a text distributed in advance....
"It seems impossible to me to organize indisputable elections in the chaos we see today," said the king, who was due to meet French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Tuesday.
"Only if the situation improved could an election be organized on schedule," he said.
"If the elections take place in the current disorder, the best-organized faction will be that of the extremists and the result will reflect that advantage.
"With such a scenario, there is no chance the situation will improve," he said. Asked if partial elections would isolate the Sunnis, he said: "That's exactly our worry."
