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Mon 31 Jan, 2005 06:35 am
"But I want to say one thing: I want to thank the U.S. soldiers for bringing this to Iraq," said the ex-soldier who had been imprisoned by deposed ruler Saddam Hussein. "Without them, we would have to vote for Saddam always." About 300,000 Iraqi and American forces secured the streets and polling sites in a massive security operation that shut down all vehicle movement and created multiple cordons around voting centers.
Voters were searched as many as three times before being allowed into the election centers, and Iraqi national guardsmen even checked babies wrapped in blankets.
Even so, insurgents did break through with at least nine suicide bomb attacks, most of them in and around Baghdad, and rockets boomed throughout the day.
In the restive market town of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, there were 30 attacks in 24 hours, although a senior U.S. military official said 24 of them had "no impact."
One of the deadliest came in Hillah, south of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber killed four persons on a bus filled with voters.
Even so, the violence fell far short of the bloodbath proportions that had been threatened by terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.
"Today, the terrorists have lost the war," declared Interior Ministry spokesman Thaer Nakib.
President Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer cast the first vote yesterday at a polling station inside the U.S.-fortified green zone. Dressed in a gold-trimmed white robe and traditional headgear, he and his wife, Nasreen Berwari, filled out their ballots and placed them in sealed plastic ballot boxes.
"I feel very exuberant," said Mr. al-Yawer as he showed his ink-stained finger to reporters. "This is the first step toward joining the free world."
The president, a Sunni, heads one of the secular electoral lists.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a Shi'ite who leads another list, also beamed and shook hands with supporters after he emerged from a VIP polling site tucked inside the green zone.
"This is history in the making," he said. "It is a momentous point in history. ... I feel great, really believe me, this is one of our big achievements."
In Baghdad's typically busy Shi'ite neighborhood of Karrada, Iraqis began to slowly trickle out of their homes early in the morning, walking in groups of two or more, husbands and wives and mothers, daughters and granddaughters.
Adnan Mehdi, 65, dressed in a threadbare blue pinstripe suit and red tie, proudly beckoned to two journalists.
"Where have you been? I was the first voter here," he said, showing off his purple-inked finger.
Samar Shakur walked hand in hand with her 70-year-old grandmother, Khadra Idriss, from the Karrada polling site, both with the telltale ink marks.
Explosions sounded throughout the capital in the early morning and again in the afternoon, but people appeared to take them in stride, hardened by months of violence that has claimed the lives of thousands of Iraqis.
Raghdad Kassim, 28, a pharmacy worker, voted with her mother, Intesar Mohammed, at the Masrja Ayun Primary School in Karrada, despite weeks of death threats pasted across Baghdad neighborhoods.
"All the Iraqi people are hoping for this election to take place. I am not afraid of coming to vote, and I hope that the list that I voted for will be good for Iraq. Our future is bright, inshallah [God willing]," she said.
As poll-closing time neared, Karrada's main thoroughfare still looked like a pedestrian mall. Most shops stayed closed all day, but old men had gathered to discuss the day's events as they drank tea and played dominoes with purple-stained fingers.
Women, who earlier in the day had stayed indoors, began to emerge, strolling two, three and four abreast in the middle of the streets to the polling booths.
"Women are supposed to vote," said Assia Witwit, wife of Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan, who voted in the green zone. "The women are more interested in this because they want to get their rights."
Rajaa Karzai, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council that led the country before the transfer of power to Iraqis in June, agreed.
"I can't tell you how thrilled I am," she said, her head covered in a scarf. "This brings the woman so she feels like a person and she feels she there is no difference between her and men. Now she feels equal to man."
Now which of you was saying that Michael Moore's depiction of joyful Iraqis -- children playing and the like -- in "F9/11" was a lie?
Tis a good day for Iraq and I pray to nothing that remains so.
PDiddie wrote:Now which of you was saying that Michael Moore's depiction of joyful Iraqis -- children playing and the like -- in "F9/11" was a lie?
I am very touched by your deep empathy for the Iraqis attempt to govern themselves and risk death at the hands of the anti-democratic terrorists. Your compassion for their struggle virtually jumps out of your post.
Brandon9000 wrote:I am very touched by your deep empathy for the Iraqis attempt to govern themselves and risk death at the hands of the anti-democratic terrorists. Your compassion for their struggle virtually jumps out of your post.
Ah, sarcasm. Seems to be your only solace lately.
No dancing emoticons for you?
PDiddie wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:I am very touched by your deep empathy for the Iraqis attempt to govern themselves and risk death at the hands of the anti-democratic terrorists. Your compassion for their struggle virtually jumps out of your post.
Ah, sarcasm. Seems to be your only solace lately.
No dancing emoticons for you?
Find my last post with dancing emoticons. It's been some time since I was 5 years old.
I am pleasently surprised with the turnout estimated at 60% and the minimal amount of violence.
This is a gigantic first step in a process that many thought would never occur.
To those sceptics (mostly democtraic supporters), you are WRONG, AGAIN.
In that case, I am likewise touched by your deep empathy for the Iraqis' joy at expressing their democratic freedom to vote, despite the risk of death at the hands of the insurgents.
Your compassion for their struggle doesn't quite jump out of your first post, however.
Hey guys, can't we just be happy for the Iraqi's? For decades, they had NO choice. Now there is a choice. They are on the bumpy road from dictatorship to democracy.
It seems to me that the colonists in America had a bit of a problem from the British, who wanted to retain the status quo. What do you think would have been had the colonists decided that it was just easier to leave things just as they were?????
It would be a relief if people stopped looking at everything that happens in the world as some sort of dramatic enactment in a political morality play.
Quote:Train Wreck of an Election
There is only one way in which the grand claims made by Washington for the weekend voting will be true -- and that is if the elections empower an Iraqi government that moves quickly to repudiate Washington. The only meaning "freedom" can have in Iraq right now is freedom from the US occupation, which is the ground of disorder. But such an outcome of the elections is not likely. The chaos of a destroyed society leaves every new instrument of governance dependent on the American force, even as the American force shows itself incapable of defending against, much less defeating, the suicide legions. The irony is exquisite. The worse the violence gets, the longer the Americans will claim the right to stay. In that way, the ever more emboldened -- and brutal -- "insurgents" do Bush's work for him by making it extremely difficult for an authentic Iraqi source of order to emerge. Likewise the elections, which, as universally predicted, have now ratified the country's deadly factionalism.
Full blown civil war, if it comes to that, will serve Bush's purpose, too. All the better if Syria and Iran leap into the fray. In such extremity, America's occupation of Iraq will be declared legitimate. America's city-smashing tactics, already displayed in Fallujah, will seem necessary. Further "regime change" will follow. America's ad hoc Middle East bases, meanwhile, will have become permanent. Iraq will have become America's client state in the world's great oil preserve. Bush's disastrous and immoral war policy will have "succeeded," even though no war will have been won. The region's war will be eternal, forever justifying America's presence. Bush's callow hubris will be celebrated as genius. Congress will give the military machine everything it needs to roll on to more "elections." These outcomes, of course, presume the ongoing deaths of tens of thousands more men, women, and children. And American soldiers.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/02/01/train_wreck_of_an_election?mode=PF
What a strange feeling.
We are witnessing (in effect) the birth of Iraqi Democracy. Who can't say that a birth is a great thing?
But, this is a very unnatural birth indeed-- the infant Democracy is being ripped out of the womb, well before term, using only the bluntest of instruments..
This risky procedure is risking the life of both Iraq and her new baby democracy. Who wouldn't question the doctor's who ordered it.
US policies in Iraq have been invasive and painful. The life of the mother and infant are far from insured. There are many ways we could have help both-- but we seem to have other priorities.
I wish Iraq the best and I am happy for the vote and the chance for a democratic political settlement.
I am furious at the inept policy of the Bush administration that celebrates the violent vote it pressed for, but doesn't have the brains or the heart to offer a true democracy.
60% eh? What beautiful statistics....
hightor wrote:
Train Wreck of an Election
Train wreck of an election.....
BWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAH HAHAH Hahahahh hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah hahahah hahahah haahahah hahahahah hahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahh ahahahahaaaaaaa.......
Picture the demoKKKrats, and the suffering which this scene in Iraq must cause them.
I mean, it would be hard enough on them if Slick Clinton had been followed up by
an ordinary old-style republican like Herbert Hoover or Taft. Even that would
make them look very, very bad in comparison, but to have Clinton followed by a
truly righteous man who institutes policies based on principles and
righteousness must just hurt like hell.
pain
more pain...
Ingenious democrat strategem to prevent world from seeing tears brought on by spread of democracy...
Gosh Gunga, I have never seen anyone highjack their own thread before.
Sometimes it seems you do everything in your power to avoid mature intellectual debate.
I am going to continue this discussion elesewhere.
Sorry, but from what I read it's simply inconceivable to me that anybody could even think of trying to call this thing a 'train wreck of an election'. I'd have thought that would even be beyond the capacity of democrats for self deception.
Listen to what some of the Iraqis are saying:
http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/
Quote:
What we have witnessed is something amazing. I am an Iraqi and a Baghdadi and should know, and deep down in my heart I knew; yet I must admit that I did not expect all this. The common Iraqi citizen has taken all by surprise, including those of us who are indigenous to this land.
It was expected that relatively secure areas in the South and North were going to see heavy turnout. Yet Baghdad; subjected to a terrorist and intimidation campaign of unprecedented scale and cruelty; Baghdad, deprived of electricity, fuel and lately even water( which is more dangerous than anything else); Baghdad, that lacks security, where the citizens face mortal danger every moment of their daily life; Baghdad, where life has almost ground to a standstill; that citizens of this Baghdad should line up at polling stations braving very real dangers, with mortars raining down and scores of suicide bombers sent out to blow up people, and moreover that many even brought their children: this Baghdad was a revelation even to Baghdadis.
There were amazing scenes; not very likely to seen anywhere else. There were acts of heroism. Abdul Amir Kadhim, saw a man whom he suspected to be a suicide bomber, he threw himself on the man before he could get to the waiting line of people; and sure there was an explosion and this young man gave his life to save the others. Prime Minister Allawi paid tribute to this heroism. At one station there was a suicide attack and several people fell; when people of the neighborhood heard of this, the waiting line suddenly swelled to three times in size; people rushed out of their homes and came running to wait in line; it was their way to express their defiance and anger at this crime. The examples of bravery and courage are too numerous to recount. People took courage from each other, as people came out others watched and did not want to be left out. It was something incredible to watch. Yes this was a historic day, a day to remember until our dying day. With one stroke, in a single day, the silent majority spoke and answered all the pundits and doubters, and those who spoke on their behalf. Yet we have been telling you this all along; we have been telling you ever since this blogging movement started. Do you now see that we were not representing minority views, that we were not some CIA agents trying to make propaganda?
I find it difficult right know to write coherently; I just want to convey to you some of the tremendous feelings overwhelming my soul now.
As for some of the Arab scum and other detractors, they are appearing on TV screens looking like they have just swallowed a cockroach, or perhaps had some awful lizard creeping up their backsides; They fidget, they try hard to find some words, some way to get round this, to belittle, twist to distort facts; but it is not easy, not easy when the entire world, the entire humanity are watching intently this incredible event.
Finally, we heard the speech of President Bush Loud and clear. He, and the American people and their British and other valiant allies have much to do with this event. All I can say is that this man has all the essential traits of character that distinguishes the great men of history; the insistence and utter conviction and the perseverance and steadfastness in the face of all doubters and detractors. This was no ordinary election, and it was not simply to elect a constituent assembly. It was the answer of the people, what they really thought about the liberation, what they really thought of the ideas preached by the president. This was a message by the Iraqi people to the American people and their great president. It was the heart of Iraq answering the heart of America that voted to give the President the mandate to finish the task; it was the answer that the common people of Iraq gave by braving danger and exposing their life and that of their children and families to death, this was their way to make their voice heard.
Well, thank you Mr. President, we heard you; and I am sure you also heard us.
Peace be upon you all and the mercy of Allah and his blessings.
In all honesty, no one will be able to judge the success of this election for a long time, perhaps a year, perhaps longer.
There is no democracy until all segments of Iraq accept the rule of the government that emerges. If this election does not result in some sort of democracy, I think we would all agree that it will fail.
The government that emerges from the results of Sunday has a daunting task of balancing the wishes of very disparate constitutencies-- from the Shiites who feel they have the right to rule, to the Kurds who want indepence, to the Sunnis who feel something is being stolen from them. Then there is a question of the people who gain power... will they choose democracy over the wishes of their particular constituency?
Even Bush admits that this will be a very difficult task.
I understand the celebration of Iraqi's, but you must take into account that not all Iraqis are celebrating, and some ethnic groups are celebrating much more than others.
The gaudy celebrations of Bush supporters are very premature. This is "Mission Accomplished" all over again.
The Sunni's had the opportunity to participate in the elections and decided not to. The made an active choice. If they wanted to be a part of unifying Iraq they could have, but I don't think any tears need to be shed for them. They have lived the good life for 30 years while the rest of the country suffered under Saddam rule. You'll have to excuse those that now want to celebrate this new victory. They deserve it.
Apparently, diehard pessimists are not a new problem. Consider this:
http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/losing_media.html
McGentrix wrote:The Sunni's had the opportunity to participate in the elections and decided not to.
The way I read it a hell of a lot of them participated.
All I am saying that it is a bit early for usl to be celebrating sure victory in Iraq.
Your John Passos article can be evaluated with the benefit of 60 years of history. As can similar articles written in the Vietnam era.
Are you guys interested in intelligent discussion to try to understand what is undoubtably a complex and difficult situation... or are you just looking for cheap shots at liberals?
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