NYT's preeminent expert on Iraq, who says he spent most of the summer there, said on MTP today that we are not arming Sunnis.

From the transcript:

This is from 1997, but it seems especially relevant in light of the overselling of Iraq's election:

"Constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring constitutional liberalism. In contrast to the Western and East Asian paths, during the last two decades in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, dictatorships with little background in constitutional liberalism have given way to democracy. The results are not encouraging. In the western hemisphere, with elections having been held in every country except Cuba, a 1993 study by the scholar Larry Diamond determined that 10 of the 22 principal Latin American countries "have levels of human rights abuse that are incompatible with the consolidation of [liberal] democracy." ...