PELOSI NIXES BUSH/CIA PLAN TO INFLUENCE IRAQI ELECTIONS

It turns out that the Bush administration had a little plan cooked up whereby they would use the CIA to pass money to favored candidates in the Iraqi elections to counteract what they said was an Iranian plot to do the same. SanFran Nan (Pelosi) apparently heard about it and intervened with Condi-Lie-zza.

This squares with "free and democratic elections," doesn't it?

UPDATE: Professor Cole has historical context:

If Muslims think that "democracy" is a stalking horse for CIA control of their country, then they will flee the system and prefer independent-minded strongmen that denounce the US. The constitutional monarchies established in the Middle East by the British were similarly undermined in the popular imagination by the impression they gave of being mere British puppets. This was true of the Wafd Party in Egypt in the 1940s and early 1950s, which the Free Officers overthrew in 1952 in the name of national indepencence. It was also true in Iraq, where in 1958 popular mobs dragged the corpse of the pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Said through the streets and finished off the British-installed monarchy.