Further to my earlier post on the Iraqi Constitution: Actually, Article 44 (“All individuals have the right to enjoy the rights stated in international human rights agreements and treaties endorsed by Iraq that don't run contrary to the principles and rules of this constitution”) was elimated in the final draft after all. For some reason I had thought that the only major change to the proposed Constitution was in the rule about how it could be amended, so I was working from my printout of the draft published in August in composing this entry. The full text of the draft that was actually voted on October 15th is here (What now appears as Article 44 is just the provision that was previously Article 45.) Looking over the updated draft, I don’t think anything else I highlighted has been changed.
Amnesty International’s statement deploring the change is here. (Actually, this is how the change came to my attention; I was looking something else up on their site). Their assessment is basically correct, I think. It wasn’t strongly worded enough in the original in my opinion, but obviously it was strong enough to be threatening to fundies; the deletion is a real loss.