NP: Mos Def, The New Danger

I'm not much of a policy guy, but with all the furor over whether or not Iraq should have elections in January, couldn't they avoid a lot of hassle by assigning one-year term limits to this first election only? Then you have the symbolism of the election itself, but you've also got a timetable to do it better.

You'd have to safeguard that the newly-elected officials don't just change that law once they get in, but when you consider all the crazy shit Bremer put in place, I can't imagine that would be hard. If they abused their power in other ways to hold on to that power, then they get the civil war that they would, at that point, deserve. If not, they run on their record, and the Sunnis may actually have a better chance to claim they should win the second election.

Isn't this pretty much what happened in Afghanistan with the loya jurga, anyway? Heck, even a two-year term wouldn't seem outrageous, would it? Does anyone actually know how long the winners in this much-ballyhooed election will even stay in office? Not counting assassinations, of course.

Just a thought. Feel free to tear it apart as you see fit.