Joy explodes across Iraq

ebrown, I do not consider this a victory for us, but a victory for the Iraqi people. This is merely another rung on the ladder to freedom and self rule for the Iraqis.

Again McGentrix,

Whether this is a victory for the Iraqi people or not depends a lot on what happens next.

You can't tell which ladder we are on by looking at the initial rungs.

What I have noted here is that liberals have been taking cheap shots at everybody else here for the last two years and have now been made to look very bad and very stupid for doing so. If they had any real survival instincts they'd be conducting a big meeting about now to reformulate their schtick.

I don't see how this "hurts" people opposed the war. No matter what happened, you know Bush Inc. would spin it as something positive -- why do you think they planned it so close to the State of the Union address?

The quote is typical of a certain political mentality -- a juvenile one. First you make the categorical assumption that widespread participation is a "defeat" for the domestic opposition to the war. This leads to the subtle message that if you don't support the war, you support Zarqawi.

Then notice the cute spelling -- "demoKKKrats" -- oooh! How clever! How powerful! How stupid -- since the Democratic Party has led the movement to insure racial equality in the USA.

Then there's the obligatory insult to Clinton, followed by the sanctimonious appraisal of Bush as some sort of righteous saint -- obviously no attempt to understand a complex situation here, merely an opportunity to spout the party line -- tiresome, ineffective, and all too predictable.

Why the U S Will Not Leave Iraq
by Pepe Escobar

The White House, the Pentagon and the neo-conservatives were forced - by Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's brilliant brinkmanship - to accept these elections, in which a Shi'ite victory is assured. For many Iraqis, Sunni and Shi'ite, Washington's endgame is not withdrawal, but finding the right proxy government: only the naive may believe that an imperial power would voluntarily abandon the dream scenario of a cluster of military bases planted over virtually unlimited reserves of oil.
http://207.44.245.159/article7922.htm

This forum has officially devolved into Abuzz.

McGentrix and Gunga, an honest question

If the Sistani group sets up an democratically elected Islamic government that is friendly with Iran and tell the US to get the heck out by June, Is this a victory?

I would accept this outcome, would you?

Considering the fact that the US sponsor Allawi appears to have gotten his butt soundly kicked in the election, this may be the best Bush can hope for.

The question is whether Bush can accept this outcome.

Not your fault.

And a belated welcome to A2K. For some reason I remember someone of your handle there who was a raging right-wing nut. Am I misremembering?

I share your cautious approach, ebrown.

Speaking of Vietnam:

Yeah. Let's hear it for the Iraqis ability to vote and let's hear it for their ability to choose an anti-American style Shiite government.

Good for them!! Afterall, that IS freedom and Democracy, is it not?

Couldn't agree more. Why is it that the Rightwingers can't refrain from all the name calling, vitriol, smears and lies, and just present their argument?

My guess is that when you're in control of everything, you start sounding even more ridiculous when trying to consolidate even more political power.

Pathetic.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000788083


UPDATE: Officials Back Away from Early Estimates of Iraqi Voter Turnout
Everyone is delighted that so many Iraqis went to the polls on Sunday, but do the two turnout numbers routinely cited by the press -- 8 million and 57% -- have any basis in reality? And was the outpouring of voters in Sunni areas really "surprisingly strong"?

By Greg Mitchell

(February 02, 2005) -- Everyone, of course, is thrilled that so many Iraqis turned out to vote, in the face of threats and intimidation, on Sunday. But in hailing, and at times gushing, over the turnout, has the American media (as it did two years ago in the hyping of Saddam's WMDs) forgotten core journalistic principles in regard to fact-checking and weighing partisan assertions?

It appears so. For days, the press repeated, as gospel, assertions offered by an election official that 8 million Iraqis went to the polls on Sunday, an impressive 57% turnout rate. I questioned those figures as early as last Sunday, and offered the detailed analysis below on Wednesday. Finally, on Thursday night, John F. Burns and Dexter Filkins of The New York Times reported that Iraqi election officials have quietly "backtracked, saying that the 8 million estimate had been reached hastily on the basis of telephone reports from polling stations across the country and that the figure could change."

Then, in Friday's paper, Burns and Filkins noted that one election commision official was "evasive about the turnout, implying it might end up significantly lower than the initial estimate." They quoted this official, Safwat Radhid, exclaiming: "Only God Almighty knows the final turnout now." They revealed that the announcement of a turnout number, expected to be released this weekend, has been put off for a week, due to the "complex" tabulation system.

I'll be delighted if that figure, when it is officially announced, exceeds the dubious numbers already enshrined by much of the media. But don't be surprised if it falls a bit short. The point is: Nobody knows, and reporters and pundits should have never acted like they did know when they stated, flatly, that 8 million Iraqis voted and that this represents a turnout rate of about 57%.

Carl Bialik, who writes the Numbers Guy column for Wall Street Journal Online, calls this "a great question ... how the journalists can know these numbers -- when so many of them aren't able to venture out all over that country." Speaking to E&P on Wednesday, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post -- one of the few mainstream journalists to raise questions about the turnout percentage -- referred to the "fuzzy math" at the heart of it.

Those with long memories may recall the downward-adjusted turnout numbers that followed violence-plagued elections in South Vietnam in 1967 and in El Salvador in 1984.

And one thing we now know for sure: the early media blather about a "strong" Sunni turnout has proven false. Adding a dose of reality, The Associated Press on Wednesday cited a Western diplomat who declared that turnout appeared to have been "quite low" in Iraq's vast Anbar province. Meanwhile, Carlos Valenzuela, the chief United Nations elections expert in Iraq, cautioned that forecasts for the Sunni areas were so low to begin with that even a higher-than-expected turnout would remain low.

In a rare reference to an actual vote tabulation, The New York Times on Thursday reports that in the "diverse" city of Mosul, with 60% of the count completed, the overall turnout seems slightly above 10%, or "somewhat more than 50,000 of Mosul's 500,000 estimated eligible voters."

ebrown_p ... vindicated.

Thank you so much hightor.

I don't think anyone has ever said that before-- anywhere.

Beware the euphoria about Iraq's election
February 7, 2005/the AGE


History has a sober lesson for those intoxicated by the poll, writes Scott Burchill.

The fact that elections actually took place in Iraq was a very good thing.

Contrary to media reporting, particularly in outlets that led the cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the United States and Britain were strongly opposed to elections and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to accept a ballot.

As The Christian Science Monitor reported on January 20:

"When US administrator Paul Bremer was pushing for an Iraqi constitution written by US appointees in the summer of 2003, (Grand Ayatollah) Sistani issued a religious ruling, or fatwa, saying that only an elected body could write the constitution. The US backed down. In November 2003, when Mr Bremer was seeking to choose an interim government through appointments and indirect voting, Sistani ruled that only direct elections would do.

"The US said Iraq was too turbulent for full elections and that a vote couldn't be held until a complete national census was held. Sistani's aides countered that food-ration cards issued to every Iraqi family could be used as registration documents for the elections. And that's what's happening now. When Bremer went to the US and cobbled together the current transitional process, most observers say it was largely with appeasing Sistani in mind."

That a humiliating backdown is now portrayed as a shining example of President Bush's messianic vision of a democratic Middle East - and for some, a retrospective justification for the invasion and occupation of the country - is a grotesque example of "the ends justify the means" morality.

It's also a stunning case of wilful amnesia.

First and foremost, the election should be seen as a triumph of non-violent resistance for which the senior Shiite cleric is a powerful symbol.

The fact that millions had to risk their lives in order to vote is, however, the responsibility of occupying armies that have conspicuously failed to provide Iraqi citizens with peace or security. In attacking a secular state, the US-led coalition has not only seriously exacerbated ethnic and religious tensions that scarcely existed before - it also provided conditions in which terrorism has thrived.

Measuring the "success" of the election is therefore inseparable from the human cost that preceded it and which promises to rise. How many innocent civilians lost their lives in the 21 months before last Sunday's ballot? We don't know because the occupying armies refuse to keep count.

The key question now is whether a government that is seen as legitimate by all sectors of Iraqi society will emerge, and if its likely call for the withdrawal of occupying armies will be respected by Washington and London. It's at that point we will know if Iraq is again independent and sovereign.

Election euphoria among conservative pundits such as Gerard Henderson (on this page last Tuesday) has taken odd, if predictable form - attacks on those who questioned the wisdom of holding elections while the country was a war zone and under foreign military occupation. Point scoring in some perceived culture war against "the left", instead of serious analysis, has also become the house style for editorials and opinion articles in the Murdoch press on the subject of Iraq.

Before Bush's supporters become too intoxicated by the historical significance of the January 30 ballot in Iraq, and assume that legitimacy has been conferred upon a new Iraqi polity, they might reflect on the following New York Times report from September 4, 1967, which appeared under the heading, "US Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror":

"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

"According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

"The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the national election based on the incomplete returns reaching here."

Sound familiar? Not all "democratic" elections leave a triumphant legacy. And sometimes, history has a habit of repeating itself. We should all hope that for the people of Iraq, in this case it doesn't.

Dr Scott Burchill is senior lecturer in international relations at Deakin University.
[email protected]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Beware-the-euphoria-about-Iraqs-election/2005/02/06/1107625057172.html?oneclick=true

Ebrown, I devoted an entire thread to asking the A2K conservatives that question: Q for the conservatives: what is more important, re: Iraq?

Both the Dos Passos headline from just after WW2 (which I'd seen here before) and the contemporary report on the South-Vietnam elections are amazing finds, by the way. Pause for thought.

All this election does is create a legislature that will write a consistution, which in its self is no small advance. But most of the 40% who did not, or in some cases because of threats of violence could not vote, were Sunni muslims. The result is a Shiite dominated legislature under the influence of Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the result may be an Islamic Republic ie Iran redux.