Over the course of the past two years, the U.S. government has been trying to create a new government in Iraq. Finally, after many hardships and casualties, the U.S troops have succeeded. The dictatorship in Iraq has been long since “taken out,” and now the U.S. armed forces have successfully set up a democratic government in Iraq.

            After two long years of fighting, the citizens of Iraq have finally voted for a new leader, which is called the president. President Jalal Talabani, Sadam Hussein’s “most implacable enemy,” has been inaugurated into the leadership of the country of Iraq in an attempt to get the country operating on its own. When asked about his thoughts on this idea of a new government in Iraq, a history teacher of Spring Valley High School said, “It’s great! I think democracy should be spread everywhere!” He also said, “While not any casualties are good, the price we have paid will be much lower than the reward we will get from going into Iraq.”

As the new president is a Shiite Arab, he is planning to include the Sunni Arabs in the government to increase the stability of the government. The Iraqi lawmakers have allowed the Sunni Arabs to hold 17 seats in parliament, the Shiite Arabs hold 140 seats out of 275 in the National Assembly, and the Kurds hold 75 seats. Interim prime minister has exactly one month to come up with his Cabinet, which will allow the new government begin to create a permanent constitution before August 15^th. If the constitution is accepted, the elections for the permanent government will be held in December, and as Talabani’s post us mainly for a ceremonial purpose, the official government position will be decided then.

Someone may ask “Why did we have to go to all of this trouble to do this in Iraq?” The answer is very simple. Democracy in many peoples’ opinions is a great form of government. Because Iraq had a form of government much like a dictatorship and the ruler could carry out any order that he wanted to. This, of course, had to be changed because of its effects on other countries and parts of the world.

Last year the country was reeling from pictures and stories of abuse from the Abu Ghraib US military prison in Iraqi. Under Saddam Hussan the prison was a notorious torture center where inmates were jammed into twelve by twelve cells to await there fate. Somewhere around fifty thousand men and women had to live in vile conditions while listening to the sounds of torture and watch weekly executions. After the US toppled Saddams administration it became a military prison that boasted a population of several thousand. The staff was partially made up by army personal with experience in the prison guard field, not as many have said army personall who where ignorant of the ways a prison runs. A month after the general in charge of the prison said that the conditions of the prison were so much better that they where worried the prisoners would not want to leave, she was, according to the New Yorker fact, “formally admonished and quietly suspended.”  This was due to major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez.

Major General Antonio M. Taguba listed some abuses perpetrated by the prison staff in a report obtained by the New Yorker fact.

“Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

CNN.com reported that the army released a report citing 27 people who are accused of being associated with abuses at Abu Ghraib. The accused are as follows, 23 soldiers from a military intelligence unit and four civilian contractors working with them. The site went on to say that investigators also found three military police who participated in abuse, in addition to seven soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, along with a Army Reserve unit that provided guards for the cellblocks, which was already charged in the scandal. The soldiers were members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. These soldiers oversaw interrogations at the infamous prison outside Baghdad. Also, a team of 28 investigators, analysts and legal advisers, said that a probe showed 15 of 23 personnel at the prison were doing things that were abusive, but thought they were acting within the scope of their duties. The first trial is set for the first January 7, 2005.

On March 21, 2005 in a Northern Minnesota high school, killing nine people and wounding as many as 15 others. He turned his gun on himself. This shooting is the nation’s worst since the 1999 Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colo. It occurred at the Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minn.

 He shoots his grandparents first, then went to school and shoots a security guard and police officers, then his classmates before he killed himself. The suspect is identified as 17-year-old Jeffrey Weise; he was a junior at the high school. He had posted messages last year on a neo-Nazi Web site calling himself the “Angel of Death”.

Paul McCabe, an FBI agent, said that 10 people are confirmed dead: the suspect, five students, a female English teacher, a male security officer and the suspect’s grandparents. The teacher was identified as 62-year-old Neva Rogers and the security officer as Derrick Brun.