Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005 | 9:20 a.m.
The proposed Iraqi Constitution certainly employs plenty of pleasant-sounding platitudes similar to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. However, so did the Soviet Constitution that consolidated tyranny.
The draft Iraqi Constitution contains few, if any, real protections for individual rights because of the numerous "exceptions" clauses that negate the rights putatively protected in the document. Even without the provisions of Islamic law that are embedded in the proposed Iraqi Constitution, it is so bad that had a foreign government sought to impose this constitution on the United States back in 1787, the Founding Fathers would have considered it an act of war.
Any honest analysis of the text of the current draft Iraqi Constitution, greatly influenced by the Bush administration, would conclude that the document offers no protection of individual rights while proposing a large helping of socialism, big government and state interference in the family. Thus, the new constitution proposed is the opposite of the U.S. Constitution.
FRANK M. PELTESON
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