Iraq has a new president and he is not Sunni like the prior model:

Members of Iraq's new National Assembly elected Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president of this majority-Arab nation on Wednesday and set the appointment of a Shiite Muslim to Iraq's most powerful post, prime minister, as his first order of business for Thursday.

For the first time in 50 years, the Kurds and majority Shiites hold power in Iraq.

My favorite account of this new development in Iraq was this description of the former head of state:

Saddam Hussein watched the election of Iraq’s new President on video today and was shaken by what he saw, the country’s human rights minister said.

“He was clearly upset. He realised that it was over, that a democratic process had taken place and that there was a new, elected President,” Bakhtiar Amin said. “It was not just the fact that there was a new President, but that the President was a Kurd. And the previous interim President became a vice-president.

What’s more, it all happened without bloodshed,” he said. Saddam watched a video recording of the election, broadcast live on Iraqi television, in his prison cell at Camp Cropper, a US-run high security facility on the outskirts of Baghdad. Later, 11 of his senior lieutenants, including two half-brothers and former deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, watched the same video together, Amin said.

It seems a painful reality is finally kicking in. However, Mr. Hussein will always be King of the Spiders in my book.