ELECTIONS HERE AND THERE

Sam Smith writes in Progressive Review:

“As the residents of America’s oldest colony, Washington DC, can attest, elections are a manifestation of democracy but far from a guarantee of it. Elections accompanied by continued colonial rule are part fraud and part frustration. Elections that change names but keep the power elsewhere are not democracy. Elections that give you a prime minister take your oil are not democracy. Elections that give you a constitution but Monsanto much of your food supply are not democracy. Iraq remains a colony of the United States.

“One also does not generally associate democracy with a country run by a puppet of a imperial power formerly in the employ of the CIA such as Iyad Allawi. Before that Allawi was by some reports, including Sermour Hersh, up to even dirtier business as an allegedly murderous agent of the Baath Party in Europe.”

IRREGULARITIES ADMITTED: ANOTHER OHIO?

Its amazing how the second and third day story on any event often contradicts or at least complicates our undertstanding of the origin reports. Last night, Al Jazeera was reporting: “Tens of thousands of Iraqis – mainly Sunni Arabs – may have been denied their right to vote on Sunday because of insufficient ballots and polling centers, officials have said. ”

WHAT WAS THE TURNOUT?

Assessing the election, Middle East specialist Phyllis Bennis writes:

“Millions of Iraqis participated in the election, but it is still unclear how many. International journalists were limited to five polling stations in Baghdad, four of which were in Shi’a districts with expected high turnout. The U.S.-backed election commission in Iraq originally announced a 72% participation immediately after the polls closed, then downscaled that to “near 60%” - actually claiming about 57% turn-out. But those figures are all still misleading. The Washington Post reported (two days after the vote, on page 7 of the Style section) that the 60% figure is based on the claim that 8 million out of 14 million eligible Iraqis turned out. But the 14 million figure itself is misleading, because it only includes those registered Iraqis, not the 18 million actually eligible voters.

“Similarly, the claim of very high voter participation among Iraqi exiles is misleading, since only 280,000 or so Iraqis abroad even registered, out of about 1.2 million qualified to register and vote. The participation of women, both as candidates (imposed by the U.S.-backed electoral law) and as voters, was significant, but key demands of Iraqi women, particularly involving economic and social rights disproportionately denied to women, are unlikely to be met through this electoral process.

“At least in the short term, George Bush will emerge as the major winner in this election, through the false propaganda claim that Iraqi participation and enthusiasm for the elections somehow equals legitimacy for his continued occupation and the preventive war that put it in place. This is the latest effort to identify mileposts “on the road to freedom” in Iraq - earlier ones included the ” Mission Accomplished” claim, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the “transfer of sovereignty,” and none of them led to freedom, independence and security for Iraqis. In fact, Bush’s false claim of legitimacy continues to hold the Iraqi population and the 150,000 U.S. soldiers hostage to his agenda and occupation.”

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1854.shtml

THOSE THAT VOTED HERE

Ray Hannia takes a closer look at the small percentage of Iraqis that voted in the US.

“The military claims it will take 10 days to tally which is half the time it took to tally the November 2000 presidential results in Florida.

“And here’s where my concern comes in. Voter turnout is based on how many people registered. And the flaw in the system is that so few Iraqi expatriates actually registered, you have to wonder why?

“There were no such threats or deaths in the expatriate community. So, why was the registration and the turnout so low?”

http://www.counterpunch.org/hanania02012005.html

HERSH: WHAT IS THE “INSURGENCY?”

The “insurgency” was not voted out of existence as Seymour Hersh explained in a speech at New York’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue:

“Let’s all forget this word ‘insurgency’. It’s one of the most misleading words of all. Insurgency assumes that we had gone to Iraq and won the war and a group of disgruntled people began to operate against us and we then had to do counter-action against them. That would be an insurgency. We are fighting the people we started the war against. We are fighting the Ba’athists plus nationalists. We are fighting the very people that started - they only choose to fight in different time spans than we want them to, in different places.

“We took Baghdad easily. It wasn’t because we won. We took Baghdad because they pulled back and let us take it and decided to fight a war that had been pre-planned that they’re very actively fighting. The frightening thing about it is, we have no intelligence. Maybe it’s - it’s - it is frightening, we have no intelligence about what they’re doing. A year-and-a-half ago, we’re up against two and three-man teams. We estimated the cells operating against us were two and three people, that we could not penetrate. As of now, we still don’t know what’s coming next. There are 10, 15-man groups. They have terrific communications. Somebody told me, it’s - somebody in the system, an officer - and by the way, the good part of it is, more and more people are available to somebody like me.

“There’s a lot of anxiety inside the - you know, our professional military and our intelligence people. Many of them respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as much as anybody here, and individual freedom. So, they do - there’s a tremendous sense of fear. These are punitive people. One of the ways - one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say something about how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to wonder what a Democracy is when it comes down to a few men in the Pentagon and a few men in the White House having their way. ”

http://www.counterpunch.com/hersh01272005.html

Confirming Hersh on some key points is independent journalist Chris Albritten in his Back to Iraq Blog. He writes the day after the election:

“The insurgency is not over. The Sunnis and middle-class former Ba’athists are still resentful and suspicious. An old friend of mine who was a Ba’athist, but mainly so he could get a job, is bitter and morose, feeling that now there are two occupations. “One from the Americans and one from the Iranians,” he said. The Sunnis are terrified of their old enemy, and List 169, the Sistani-blessed list, does have a number of people on it with serious ties to Iran. The country is still a mess, with deteriorating services like water and electricity. This is not to say they can’t be overcome, but this is not a time to declare victory.

“Be sure and mention all this to the war-boosters, who are, dorkily, coating their fingers with blue ink as a sign of solidarity “with the Iraqi people.” Hm. I don’t remember them doing that for Afghanistan… Why don’t they just ‘fess up and say they’re giving the finger to us doubters? This is not solidarity; it’s a taunt along the lines of, “We were right, nyah nyah!” instead of a celebration of democracy. Make no mistake: Sunday was not a validation of Bush’s policies. Most Arab states would like to have democracy, yes, but not at the barrel of a gun, which is how it came here. If the choice is being invaded, occupied and force-fed controversial elections that might lead to civil war versus working at democratic reforms at their own pace and in their own way, I suspect most Arabs would choose the latter. And who could blame them? Iraq is not an example to emulate.”

http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000859.php

THE LATEST SCANDAL

Will Fox News be all over this one they way they have been on the UN “Scandal?”

“WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff, an inspector general has found.

“The U.S. officials relied on Iraqi audit agencies to account for the funds but those offices were not even functioning when the funds were transferred between October 2003 and June 2004, according to an audit by a special U.S. inspector general.”

For more on this:
http://www.iraqreconstructionig.org/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4766808,00.html

THE STILL UNREPORTED DU DISASTER

January 24, 2005 — The Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter today charged that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions (DU) in the Iraq War.

“Writing in the Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, Executive Director of the Veterans For Constitutional Law Center in New York, stated that “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret’s naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.”

“Bernklau continued ‘This malady [from uranium munitions], that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.’

“He added that ‘Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1, of them, 11,000 are now dead. By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of “Disabled Vets” means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems. (Author’s note: The “Disabled” rate for the wars of the last century was 5%, and 10% in Viet Nam.)

“Bernklau added “The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000. He and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, [it] … is far too big to hide or to cover up!”

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15334.shtml

Hood, Texas, to dereliction of duty, making a false statement and two counts of battery — a reduction in the aggravated assault accusation he faced.

GONZALES FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL?

Read…

The ACLU’s letter to the Senate:
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17374&c=206

The ACLU’s report on Gonzales’s civil rights and civil liberties record:
http://www.aclu.org/gonzales

Information about the ACLU’s Freedom on Information Act lawsuit on the torture documents:
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia