December 4, 2003 - It turns out that the turkey and trimmings that the President was photographed carrying around the mess hall at Baghdad International wasn't being served to the troops. It wasn't intended to be eaten. It was a prop, window dressing for the chow line. The President, a Washington Post account reveals, picked up the bird, got his picture taken, and after only a few seconds, put it back on the table. The press has had as much luck locating the BA pilot who the White House reported had recognized Air Force One enroute to Baghdad as Hans Blix had locating the apocryphal Weapons of Mass Destruction before Bush went to war. Mary Matalin admits that the crafts these events to "capture the Bush we know".

It was just a couple weeks ago that the Administration called Paul Bremer back to Washington to tell him that the new Administration policy was to turn Iraqi sovereignty back to a democratic Iraqi government by the end of June 2004. In October Iraqi officials developed a plan to hold a census creating a voter roll to elect a transitional assembly in time for the Administration target date. It was sent to the Iraqi Governing Council for approval. Members of the Council say that they never saw it. It seems that it got lost in the bowels of the Coalition Provisional Authority, rejected by the Americans as impractical. American officials are saying that Iraq is not ready for national elections. Instead they propose a system of caucuses, the members appointed by the CPA to select the assembly. That appears to be the Administration's definition of "democracy". To an administration that chooses to govern by staged photo-ops; on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln or the Baghdad mess hall; it is not a surprise that it is the image rather than the reality of democracy that counts.

In our seminal document of political principle, the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress declared that in a democracy government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. It was a clear and concise statement of the root principle of democratic government. If the invasion and occupation of Iraq was justified as securing the blessings of liberty to Iraqis and their posterity, then its seems that the Administration should embrace that basic principle that Jefferson so eloquently enunciated in clear and concise language rather than rejecting it in favor of an appointed system that more resembles the colonial government against which our ancestors rebelled.

As the President's Thanksgiving turkey was not food for the troops, so the America appointed caucuses are not representative democracy for the Iraqi people. Like the turkey the caucus system proposed by the occupation is merely a prop, window dressing and not at all democracy.