ABC News - Straining for Pessimism

In an online story posted today, ABC News' Michael S. James invokes "déja vu" as a reason to speculate that Iraqi voters won't be enthusiastic about Sunday's election.

After decades of domination by the British, and centuries of rule by the Ottoman Turks and other interlopers, those Iraqis may just see another government being set up under the auspices of foreigners — including "elected" governments of varying legitimacy, historians say.

Okay, we won't even get into the Ottoman Empire nonsense because they haven't been around since two turns of the century, and the British Empire hasn't administered Iraq since 1932, so any "déja vu" is only possible in the minds of a vanishingly small proportion of Iraqis - those who were around in 1932.

Think of it this way: how many Americans do you know who based their votes last November on the Great Depression or the Spanish-American War?