Well that would be really great, becuase this number would include a lot of the Sunnis.
Repeating your fallacious arguments doesn't make them any less so, ican.
Just want to say first to Farmerman- I don't know anyone, left or right politically, who wants this election to fail. Too many lives are depending on it.
The Iraqis are deserving of our best efforts and our best wishes.
Secondly, the inpression I have is that a lot of Iraqis, maybe even a majority though that might be stretching it a bit, were glad that Saddam was overthrown and that the US and allies were going to change things in their country.
Now, the vast majority of Iraqis seem to have the opposite view, that whatever Saddam's faults, it was better under his regime, with no end to this turmoil in sight. The invasion, at first partially welcomed, is now wholly hated and resisted.
Thirdly, the troubled election process. Will those declared the victors be able to say fairly that they won? Will the losers be convinced? It seems unlikely. And therefore, will this be a springboard for more unrest and insurgency?
One positive thing might be, that the Iraqi police might start to feel loyalty to the fledgling authority to serve under, and will security might start to improve.
Well, Gelisgesti, either Lash's link says something different - or she just forgot that besides the Shiites some other people live in Iraq as well.
Walter Hinteler wrote:Well, Gelisgesti, either Lash's link says something different - or she just forgot that besides the Shiites some other people live in Iraq as well.
Betcha didn't know that < alt-s > posts wheher you are ready or not
I'm sure she meant to mis-quote a different stat
80% is the figure the administration is pushing, and it's bouncing around the right wing media and popping up elsewhere here and there through repetition. No one else believes it to be even close to that. It's a deceit.
Gel and Walter--
You were correct. I misstated. I should have said 80% of Shi'ites and Kurds. Twas unintentional. Thank you for clarifying--and fixing the link. I should've checked it before I left. Apologies.
Then again, just before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was elected without his name appearing on the ballot in eleven southern states. Nobody suggested that election was not credible or valid.
In that case however, the south had a legitimate gripe at being left out of the process. If the Sunnis choose to boycott this election, they cannot complain about the outcome on the same grounds.
This election will change the world. But not in the way the Americans imagined
Robert Fisk in Baghdad
29 January 2005
Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.
............................(archived)
Shame I can't bring you the rest of this article, it's archived. I read it in the paper today, but The Indy now has the annoying habit of charging for access. Bloody cheek, after I bought the paper too.
Keen students could sign in.
McTag, I have an account with the Independent and they will charge me only a small fee to give me access to the article. I use this method often.
McTag, I think Robert Fisk has probably forgotten more about the Middle East than any of us will ever know.
This election will change the world. But not in the way the Americans imagined
Robert Fisk in Baghdad
29 January 2005
Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.
America has insisted on these elections - which will produce a largely Shia parliament representing Iraq's largest religious community - because they are supposed to provide an exit strategy for embattled US forces, but they seem set to change the geopolitical map of the Arab world in ways the Americans could never have imagined. For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large.
Amid curfews, frontier closures and country-wide travel restrictions, voting in Iraq will begin tomorrow under the threat of Osama bin Laden's ruling that the poll represents an "apostasy". Voting started among expatriate Iraqis yesterday in Britain, the US, Sweden, Syria and other countries, but the turnout was much smaller than expected.
The Americans have talked up the possibility of massive bloodshed tomorrow and US intelligence authorities have warned embassy staff in Baghdad that insurgents may have been "saving up" suicide bombers for mass attacks on polling stations.
But outside Iraq, Arab leaders are talking of a Shia "Crescent" that will run from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon via Syria, whose Alawite leadership forms a branch of Shia Islam. The underdogs of the Middle East, repressed under the Ottomans, the British and then the pro-Western dictators of the region, will be a new and potent political force.
While Shia political parties in Iraq have promised that they will not demand an Islamic republic - their speeches suggest that they have no desire to recreate the Iranian revolution in their country - their inevitable victory in an election that Iraq's Sunnis will largely boycott mean that this country will become the first Arab nation to be led by Shias.
On the surface, this may not be apparent; Iyad Allawi, the former CIA agent and current Shia "interim" Prime Minister, is widely tipped as the only viable choice for the next prime minister - but the kings and emirs of the Gulf are facing the prospect with trepidation.
In Bahrain, a Sunni monarchy rules over a Shia majority that staged a mini-insurrection in the 1990s. Saudi Arabia has long treated its Shia minority with suspicion and repression.
In the Arab world, they say that God favoured the Shia with oil. Shias live above the richest oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and upon some of the Kuwaiti oil fields. Apart from Mosul, Iraqi Shias live almost exclusively amid their own country's massive oil fields. Iran's oil wealth is controlled by the country's overwhelming Shia majority.
What does all this presage for the Sunni potentates of the Arabian peninsula? Iraq's new national assembly and the next interim government it selects will empower Shias throughout the region, inviting them to question why they too cannot be given a fair share of their country's decision-making.
The Americans originally feared that parliamentary elections in Iraq would create a Shia Islamic republic and made inevitable - and unnecessary - warnings to Iran not to interfere in Iraq. But now they are far more frightened that without elections the 60 per cent Shia community would join the Sunni insurgency.
Tomorrow's poll is thus, for the Americans, a means to an end, a way of claiming that - while Iraq may not have become the stable, liberal democracy they claimed they would create - it has started its journey on the way to Western-style freedom and that American forces can leave.
Few in Iraq believe that these elections will end the insurgency, let alone bring peace and stability. By holding the poll now - when the Shias, who are not fighting the Americans, are voting while the Sunnis, who are fighting the Americans, are not - the elections can only sharpen the divisions between the country's two largest communities.
While Washington had clearly not envisaged the results of its invasion in this way, its demand for "democracy" is now moving the tectonic plates of the Middle East in a new and uncertain direction. The Arab states outside the Shia "Crescent" fear Shia political power even more than they are frightened by genuine democracy.
No wonder, then, King Abdullah of Jordan is warning that this could destabilise the Gulf and pose a "challenge" to the United States. This may also account for the tolerant attitude of Jordan towards the insurgency, many of whose leaders freely cross the border with Iraq.
The American claim that they move secretly from Syria into Iraq appears largely false; the men who run the rebellion against US rule in Iraq are not likely to smuggle themselves across the Syrian-Iraqi desert when they can travel "legally" across the Jordanian border.
Tomorrow's election may be bloody. It may well produce a parliament so top-heavy with Shia candidates that the Americans will be tempted to "top up" the Sunni assembly members by choosing some of their own, who will inevitably be accused of collaboration. But it will establish Shia power in Iraq - and in the wider Arab world - for the first time since the great split between Sunnis and Shias that followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad.
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Thanks Kara. Your money is well spent, we are indebted to you. I hope people read it. "For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large. "
I buy the Indy daily, amounting to a cost of about £4 a week.
£200 a year, gosh, no wonder I'm poor.
Incidentally, although I've no wish to turn this into a theology discussion, the difference in terms of beliefs between a Sunni and a Shia is very little I think. But whatever it was, and I've forgotten now, it does seem to have polarised them somewhat.
Incidentally, in another (archived!) article in The Indy this week, it was stated that Pres Allawi is respected by Iraqis because it is rumoured that he shot six prisoners in a police station himself. He has a reputation for being firm.
Which reminds me of the quotation about democracy not being able to be imposed from outside- it must grow from within.
I have the feeling that these people are not yet ready.
and on this eve of destruction we have the rockets red glare: Insurgents killed two Americans in an audacious rocket strike on a U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad on Saturday, after killing 17 other people across Iraq on the eve of a landmark election.
The militants have sworn to turn the poll into a bloodbath and kill anyone who dares to vote.
The rocket struck the American compound in Baghdad's huge fortified Green Zone after dark, setting off an explosion that could be heard throughout the city center.
"It hit near the embassy building," spokesman Bob Callahan said. "There are two dead and four who are wounded ... all Americans."
The attack deepened fears of an insurgent blitz on election day and demonstrated their ability to strike at the heart of the interim government and American power in the Green Zone, a vast complex on the west bank of the Tigris river.
It could also worsen the fears of Iraqis' about voting on Sunday in the country's first multi-party election in nearly half a century.
Before the embassy attack, Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged fractious religious and ethnic groups to vote and defy "enemies trying to break us and to break our world."
Even as U.S.-trained security forces barricaded streets, sealed land borders and closed Baghdad airport, more than a dozen polling stations were attacked and bloodshed continued to overshadow the final electoral countdown.
Perhaps this is the oft times forecast laying down of leis for the invading US Forces. ( A rose by any other name is an RPG)
I confess I really don't know what the hell is going to happen in Iraq and the Middle East generally in the next few years. My knowledge of the region is far too poor.
But my knowledge of the US and this administration is rather better, and I think Fisk has the central US strategy pretty much on the nose - run away! Sort of.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=43914&start=0&sid=63b8d1a230b1a8af4a5af73c1a27c881
