[Coop]

I'm afraid they don't have quite as rosy a picture of Iraq as is routinely parroted here at FR.

That may well be the dumbest comment for the month of November.

[George W. Bush]

I was referring to his estimation of Iraq's chances at becoming a functional democracy comparable with the one in Turkey. He had helped guard the recent constitutional referendum. After that, he was on the Syrian border.

Democracy among Arabs? There's no there there. Look at Turkey, still a democracy under the armed supervision of the military after so many decades. My estimate is that we'll see Iran's mullahs overthrown and a western democracy in Iran long before any Arab state will have one.