This is "liberation"?(Insider Report)

"The nation of Iraq is moving toward self-rule," insisted President Bush in his April 13 news conference. Referring to the June 30 deadline for an Iraqi transitional government to be granted "sovereignty"--albeit more in name than in substance--the president declared: "On that day, the transitional administrative law [TAL], including a bill of rights that is unprecedented in the Arab world, will take full effect."

The TAL is the draft Iraqi constitution, signed by Iraqi officials on March 8. And while its bill of rights is indeed unprecedented in the Arab world, much of it will be familiar to students of statist instruments such as the Soviet Constitution and UN Charter. Although the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) insists that the document was written "by Iraqis for Iraqis," it was actually cobbled together by a committee of 22 men and three women handpicked by the CPA and supervised by CPA chief L. Paul Bremer.

"The Transitional Administrative Law ... is nearly twice as long and significantly more complicated than the U.S. Constitution," approvingly noted liberal commentator Christopher Haynes. "It is also, ironically, far more progressive. Despite the right-wing ideologues behind the regime-change experiment, the TAL institutes principles that liberals in America only dream about"--such as a "right" to health care and feminist ...