Incompetent Mismangement of Iraq

This, from the Denver Post this morning, written by Ibrahim Kazerooni who is a Shiite imam who was a dissident in Iraq and fled in 1974 after being repeatedly imprisoned and tortured by the Baathist regime. He currently is director of the Abrahamic Initiative at St. John's Cathedral in Denver.

Mr. Kazerooni writes, in part:

Without exception, the Iraqis I talked to inside and outside Iraq saw voting in Sunday's election as, first and foremost, a vote for the immediate withdrawal of occupation forces and, second, a vote to take control of their day-to-day lives, which have only worsened as a result of the White House's incompetent mismanagement of Iraq.

Electricity remains intermittent; unemployment hovers over 40 percent; security is limited; clean water is irregular; and gasoline is scarce in a country that sits on top of the world's second-largest oil reserves. Iraqis' patience is wearing thin with foreign forces they see not as liberators but as occupiers intent on starving the country of its resources.