There's a fundamental problem here, though. It's not about Iraqi faces, but Iraqi choices- not about the appearance of sovereignty, but the reality of it. What needs to happen is that the Americans must give the Iraqis the choice to do what they see fit, not just to do what the Americans say they "need to learn to do".
Yes, this isn't absolute. There should be allowances for the possibility of a relatively small or extremist group taking control of a more popular process (as happened when the theocrats took over after the Iranian revolution), and the United States should act to prevent that to the extent that Iraqi sovereignty allows.
The important thing here, however, is that Iraqi must find its own path There is absolutely no doubt that said path will not be the path America took or that Americans would take in their place. That doesn't matter. It is not a question of turning the Iraqis into Americans; that would be disastrous. It's about Iraq becoming that rarest of creatures: a state with a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Not for Americans. For Iraqis.
for this reason, i do not think that the bush administration has any interest in having a truly democratic iraq, at least not in the sense that demosthenes is describing. when bush advocated democracy in iraq he assumed that a democratic iraq would be a pro-american iraq. or more specifically, a pro-bush administration iraq. this is certainly wrong. most democracies in the world have deep disagreements with the bush administration. the best example, ironically, is iraq itself. most democracies were against the invasion. the few that were part of the "coalition of the willing" (e.g. britain, spain, italy, etc.) joined despite the fact that a majority of their public was against the invasion. a truly democratic iraq is likely to have its own differences with whoever is in washington. it might, for example, award oil contracts to non-american oil companies, or award construction contracts to companies that are not subsidiaries of halliburton.
