Hussain Shahristani sounds great.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq Robert D. Blackwill appear to have found an excellent interim prime minister. I was wrong (as usual) guessing that it would be a politician.

Shahristani is a nuclear physicist who spent a decade in Abu Ghraib because he refused to try to make a bomb for Saddam Hussein. As an exile, "he was not active in opposition political parties, choosing instead to focus his energies on humanitarian aid projects." And I love his campaign slogan
"If they consider my participation essential, I'll try to convince them otherwise."

Of course things will go wrong, they always do, but for the moment I have some hope again.

I also note that the CPA has decided to demolish Abu Ghraib. I wonder if Dr Sharistani, given his memories of the place, would be willing to detonate the charge.

What the Iraqi interim government needs is to avoid exclusion focus like a laser beam and achieve strength through coherence. As a physicist, Shahristani knows that all of these things depend on

Spin.