Damn. A busted Bush Photo-op.

It was said on local radio, that Bush attempted for ten minutes to properly speak the name of Iraq's most powerful cleric; Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al Sistani, before giving up in vain. It was reported from Crawford that Bush then held up the following photograph of al-Sistani and said, "This is the guy that broke my photah-op. This Al fella."




K-R's Washington Bureau has more:

The scheduled signing of Iraq's interim constitution was indefinitely postponed Friday after five Shiite members of the Governing Council lodged 11th hour objections to some of its key provisions.

News that the deal over the document had fallen apart wrecked the U.S.-led coalition's plans for an upbeat, made-for-TV signing ceremony that was to have taken place at 8 a.m. EST inside the heavily fortified coalition headquarters compound--and carried live on Arabic and English news networks.

More than an hour after the signing was supposed to have happened, the six piece orchestra hired for the occasion had stopped playing, and the antique desk that had belonged to Iraq's King Faisal stood abandoned, 25 fountain pens sitting untouched atop it. A senior coalition official emerged to tell dozens of waiting journalists that "democracy is sometimes a messy thing."

The official said the council members would continue to negotiate, but no announcement had been made as of 7 p.m, or 11 a.m. EST. The official said that U.S. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer was involved in the negotiations, but would not seek to force the parties to an agreement.

The official said that the dispute did not involve so called "red line" issues about which the coalition had strong views.

It was an extraordinary turn of events that underscored the fragility of Iraq's political fabric, four months before the U.S.-led coalition is scheduled to hand over sovereignty. The interim constitution had been hailed by American and Iraqi politicians as a document unprecedented in the Arab world, a blueprint for Iraq's governance for years to come.

I hate to say I saw this one coming, but I've often called democracy a messy thing. If you read the whole article, and it is worth a read, you'll find that Iraqis seem a much better mannnered lot than the Texas House of Representatives.(I've no issues Texans, but for a couple of them)