Despicable in the first order...

[N-Man]

Islam is the dominating influence in every Arab country, and the only governments that have been able to curb its influence up to now are those of dictators like Musharraf in Egypt and Bouteflika in Algeria. Most of those dictators are pan-Arabists (or were at least issued from that milieu) as was Saddam Hussein, which coincides with the fact that the Iraqi Sunnis, Hussein's main support base, form the main opposition to Islamic law as mentioned in the first article. What's interesting in Iraq is that there are three ethnic groups, two of which are to a certain degree secularized, which gives hope that these two groups - the Sunnis and the Kurds - might form a power bloc to prevent the constitution from becoming overly Islamicized. In a society used to democracy this is probably what would happen, but the Sunnis are involved in a big way with the insurgency and most of them have refused to even take part in the political debate. This is the US's big problem right now: trying to get the Sunnis to put down their weapons and realize that their interests coincide with the US's, without alienating the Shi'ite majority that, while supportive of US presence (well no one is supportive of the US, but basically they support the "New Iraq"), is strongly Islamist. The only group that supports the Ammies all the way are the Kurds. Those guys are pretty awesome, but mainly because they're sick of getting shot at by everybody and would really like to have their own country.

Forcing the Iraqis to change the constitution is a really, really bad idea that would lead to the alienation of the Shi'ites and change a difficult but winnable battle into a bloodbath of epic proportions (see: Vietnam). Just sayin. Go with the flow for now.