Americans may have a low opinion of their own Congress, but one wonders what they would think about the congress in Baghdad if they ever paid close attention to it.

By late April of last year, that then-newly elected parliament had been deadlocked for four months over who would become speaker (a post presumably reserved for a Sunni) and who would become prime minister (a post presumably reserved for a Shiite).

The Shiites rejected the Sunni candidate for speaker, Tariq al Hashemi, saying, as The New York Times put it, he was "too hard-line and sectarian." The Sunnis rejected the Shiite candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, believing he had done too little as interim prime minister to stop sectarian violence.

Finally, Hashemi and Jaafari dropped their bids, and Sunnis and Shiites accepted compromise candidates. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani became the Sunni speaker. Nouri al-Maliki became the Shiite prime minister.

President Bush, understandably, viewed this as a breakthrough for Iraqi democracy.

"Iraq's new government has another able leader and speaker, Mashhadani," Bush said on May 22, 2006. "He rejects the use of violence for political ends, and by agreeing to serve in a prominent role in this new unity government, he's demonstrating leadership and courage."

Three weeks later, on a surprise trip to Iraq, Bush met with Mashhadani, who had already received rave reviews from America's own speaker. "Denny Hastert told me I'd like him," Bush said later at a press conference. "Denny met with him. And I was impressed by him."

"I found him to be a hopeful person," the president added.

But Mashhadani, an Islamist, wasted no time in giving President Bush reason to think again.

In a July 8, 2006, interview with Al Sharqiyah TV, Mashhadani presented an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to explain what was happening in Iraq. "Those that commit these acts [of sectarian violence] are nothing but the sons of snakes and devils who receive support from abroad, particularly from the Mossad," he said. "These Jews hiding behind Iraqi faces are known to us, and the day will come when we purge our country of them."

A week later, he accused U.S. forces of butchery. "The U.S. occupation is butcher's work under the slogan of democracy and human rights and justice," he told a UN conference.

"I personally think whoever kills an American soldier in defense of his country would have a statue built for him in that country," he said. Continued...