Machinery Of Democracy Not Working Yet

J. Paul Bremer noted yesterday that technical difficulties could delay Iraq elections for up to 15 months.

"The machinery of democracy is in need of repair," he said. He explained that the U.S had over six thousand sprockets of equal rights on order and that "the government transparency module" was out of whack. Also, the United States appears to have been overcharged -- by contractor Halliburton -- for seven hundred thousand Free Speech widgets by $23 billion dollars.

"And there are a number of other technical problems delaying elections -- like the enormous number of religious Shiites who want to make this country into a fundamentalist Moslem theocracy," Bremer added.

Bleb Fusillade, a janitor for the Institute of Middle East Studies, commented, "We didn't bring the right tools, we had the wrong parts and we forgot to read the manual."