Joe Huffman points to what is an English translation of the pending Iraqi constitution and notes it’s:

not a “Bill of Rights”. It’s a list of things the government must provide–such as health care. And it specifically says citizens may not own weapons except by permit.

I was perusing the draft and found that it excluded Israelis from lots of stuff, like these passages:

Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency inside the borders of Iraq of not less than ten years for an Arab or twenty years for any other nationality, as long as he has good character and behavior, and has no criminal judgment against him from the Iraqi authorities during the time of his residency on the territory of the Iraqi republic.

And

An Iraqi may have more than one nationality as long as the nationality is not Israeli.

And the weapon section states:

Citizens may not own, bear, buy, or sell weapons, except by a permit issued in accordance with law.

This is not a Constitution, it’s a limit and wish-list for the people. As George Carlin supposedly said regarding the Iraqi constitution:

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for over 200 years and we’re not using it anymore.

Update: Der Commissar has a round up of blog reactions to the Iraqi Welfare Plan err Civilian Restrictions err Constitution.

Posted in uncategorized on July 21st, 2005 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |