Iraqis Condemn 'Election Fraud'
Thousands of Iraqis have staged a protest in Baghdad about results from the recent parliamentary elections, which they say were tainted by fraud.
Demonstrators chanted slogans alleging the polls were rigged in favour of the governing Shia religious bloc.
Some politicians have been calling for a campaign of civil disobedience if their complaints about the election are not properly investigated.
Marchers carried banners supporting Sunni Arab and secular Shia candidates.
They called for a national unity government to be set up that would share power more widely among Iraq's different communities.
posted by EAPrez @ 2:31 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
The Bush agenda forced elections last January when a large portion of the country was not stable and too dangerous to vote in. So, they elected people who wrote a Constitution recognizing Islamic law as the main source of law for Iraq. We have also seen that the fundamentalists who have taken control of the government have opened their own torture chambers and otherwise acted pretty much like one would expect from people who consider themselves to be absolutely right all the time (wonder who else that reminds you of?)
So now, they apparently rigged the election so that they can do what they did the first time-- make a deal with the Kurds which allows the Kurds to maintain their autonomy while establishing a fundamentalist state modeled on Iran in the rest of Iraq.
Two ironies that come out of this--they both challenge the notion that there are no winners or losers in Iraq, and they would almost be funny if not so tragic.
1. There is a clear winner in the U.S. war in Iraq. The winner is-- Iran. During the 1980's, they fought for nine years to try and establish an Iranian style Shi-ite dominated republic in Iraq. They failed then, largely because of how hard the Reagan administration pushed to help Saddam at least fight them to a draw. They are succeeding now, without firing a shot, and along the way have tangentially benefitted from 1. our 'friend' Chalabi spilling the beans and telling them that we had broken their military code, 2. seeing the U.S. military so bogged down and stretched to the limit that we can't realistically threaten to invade, or otherwise do more than bomb the heck out of Iran anymore (which they can survive, allowing them to get more agressive about their nuclear program), and 3. with no Saddam to worry about anymore, emerging as the clearest and undisputed Islamic regional power in the Middle East to counterbalance Israel and the United States. The mullahs in Tehran couldn't have scripted this any better if they wrote the script themselves (in fact some people have even suggested that they did everything they could, via Chalabi, a double agent, to ratchet things up and cause an American invasion of Iraq-- if that is true then they played Bush and the neo-cons like a violin).
2. There is also clear loser in the U.S. war in Iraq. The loser is-- Iraqi women. Under the new Constitution and government, they will have less rights in matters like divorce, inheritance, custody and other legal matters than they did under the brutal, but secular, regime of Saddam.
So, we have spent $300 billion and sent over two thousand American soldiers to their deaths to make the post-war Iraq look a lot like what we spent billions in the 1980's to avoid.
Well, at least the contractors and the arms manufacturers should be happy.
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