Back here I noted th…

Back here I noted that a number of liberals who had been very vocal about their pessimism over the Iraq elections had gone strangely quiet once it went quite well. Well Jimmy Carter has, at least, finally said something about it, although he had to be pressed to even mention it at all.

HEMMER: I want to talk about Iraq now and the post-election phase at this point. Still waiting results, official results. Maybe we’ll get them tomorrow, on Thursday, perhaps in the days after that.

I haven’t heard you speak just yet in the aftermath of the elections. Many say this is history and this is progress for the Iraqi people and perhaps for the entire Middle East. Do you see it the same way?

CARTER: Yes, I think it was a very successful effort. And although the — as you know, the Sunnis almost refused to participate and played a very small role in the most troubled and I’ll say violent areas of Iraq, the Shiites and the Kurds turned out in surprising numbers. Now the question is, will this be a Shiite-dominated religious organization formed as the next government, or will it be a democratic secular one? And will there be some way to encourage the Sunnis to come back in and participate?

I hope that we’ll have every success in Iraq. And that election, I think, was a surprisingly good step forward.

He offered up freely his criticism, but it took a public interview to get him to grudgingly admit that it went very well. I’m very glad to hear he finally acknowledged the truth about it, but why did it take so long, and why wasn’t he as free with his congratulations as he was with his doom-saying? (Well, you can probably guess why. Always has to do with that chair in the Oval Office and who’s sitting in it.)

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