Iraqi Election Confusion

Forum posts

• 16 December 2005, 23:42

  Spoken like a true White American.

  Ignore facts that do not fit. Present a worthless excersize as the paramount action of a nation and refocus it as a straw man essay and post. Very good — albeit impotent.

  You conveniently forget the original excuse for the invasion... Remeber the lies? The moving goalposts so as to make it seem ruining a civilization is best.

  BTW, Equalizer, holding elections under occupiation is against international law.

  It is just a matter of time where in the White Amerian forces will put their tails between their legs; declare victory and redeploy. Islam/Iraq/Arabs/Muslims cannot so easily be defeated as you like... They are an old, old civilization, having experienced such wars as the present.

  Judgement Day awaits us all — on that day, your hubris-filled moniker will be shown as false. Sinner man, where will you run to on that faithful day?

  • 17 December 2005, 13:24

    I heard that!!!!!!!!!kgb56

• 17 December 2005, 16:20

  Oh yea, free elctions like we got here. hahahahahhhahahahh go DIEBOLD

• 17 December 2005, 17:49

  You are confused because you would prefer to believe in a lie than the truth. The entire world now has so much evidence of this administration’s duplicitous policy in the Middle East than ever before, such as accumulating cases of rampant corruption which includes the loss of tens of billions of dollars to the American taxpayer; over 800 innocent people killed by US troops in check point ’misunderstandings’; lack of medical supplies, lack of food, lack of water, lack of electricity, all of which was taken for granted while Saddam was in power; use of depleted uranium, napalm and white phosphor against a civilian population; secret jails where thousands of innocents have been tortured & murdered, the list is endless.
  How many more facts does any objective observer need to have to see that the US occupation of Iraq is anything but ’benevolent’?
  Either you have been on another planet for the last 3 years, or you would rather choose the comfort of a lie that has killed tens of thousands, than to confront the truth. People like yourself are intellectually lazy cowards, preferring to hear the comforting lies of a mass media, whose only purpose is to keep the US population pacified & malleable, making sure that the consumer driven credit economy that they depend upon for their very existence is not derailed by the truth. People like you demonstrate their lack of awareness of global events to all with your insipid, childish questions, basically ignoring so many facts and events that I wonder if you have a brain at all.

  Your naivete about the real intentions of the US also needs to be addressed. What the US is doing in Iraq is no different than what they did in El Salvador in the early 1980s; Panama in 1989, Iran in 1952; Chile in 1972; Vietnam throughout the 1960s. In all of these ’landmark’ events the US deployed, either covertly or overtly, by what ever method was deemed necessary, from assassinations to actual invasions, to guarantee ’elections’ in their favor, to help build a ’democracy’ at gun point, when all they really wanted was a puppet regime installed that would answer only to them. The US has repeatedly shown the world, since the last world war, that its real interests lie in preserving its economic and physical hegemony over the world, & not in ’democratizing’ the world. Words like ’exporting democracy’, ’making the world safe for democracy’ are just words bandied about to convince the feeble-minded; the interests of a native population such as Iraq are always merely given lip service, much like they pay lip service to our own Constitution at home. In other words, Short-term memory man, the US is a global power that seeks to dominate as much of the world as they can, Fact: the US has some kind of military presence in 183 of the world’s 189 nations they will use words like ’democracy for all’, when in reality they only desire client states in place, satellites & puppets, who will do as they are told. The ruling elite of the US have demonstrated time and time again that they have no respect for free sovereign nations whatsoever, not even their own allies. They will use the word ’peace’ to fool people like yourself, who apparently think that by destroying villages and cities, massacring thousands, making misery and wreaking havoc, somehow amounts to ’peace’.
  And when insurgencies form whenever indigenous peoples do not take kindly to invasions and occupations done for their ’sake’, your kind always feign surprise that these insolent people cannot appreciate what the US has brought them: misery, death and destruction.
  I cannot think of any further evidence to brand you as an idiot.

  Here’s a question that you did not pose: How many more elections must the Iraqis have before the US will leave their country? They had one in January of this year, & not one army battalion left. They had another one this past July, again, not one single army unit was withdrawn. And they had another one this month [December, 05] and still not one single US military unit was removed, in fact more troops were put in place, ’for security reasons’, a phrase the Pentagon will repeat to the US mass media like a hypnotist whispering lulling sweet nothings into the ear of a comatose patient. They will continue to have these bogus ’elections’ until the US finally has a puppet ’prime minister’, such as that thug Allawi, installed that will say uncle to them at a drop of a dime. The US military will definitely not reduce any of its troop levels until all six permanent military bases they are currently constructing now, are completely built. There will always be a large US military presence in Iraq, unless the native population’s insurgency, growing by leaps and bounds, inflicts so much punishment on the occupation that the US will be forced to withdraw. So much for your ’democracy’.

  And yes, the real motivation driving this war is the US desire to control the flow of oil throughout the Middle East without which the US economy will unravel. That the US invasion and occupation has not increased Iraq’s oil flow to double the rate it was during Saddam’s tenure in power, is all due to gross ignorance of Middle Eastern history and culture, coupled with catastrophically poor military planning, if any real planning was done at all. The present administration is too inept even to run a low-scale invasion and occupation, costing the US taxpayer over $250 billion dollars so far, all borrowed money, I might add. The insanity of running an expensive, ill-conceived war through deficit spending boggles the mind, but people like yourself are obviously too ignorant to even bring this vitally important fact open to discussion. Your type has no inkling as to how precarious and dangerously volatile the US economy is at the present moment, due an enormous credit bubble, historically unprecendented in size, a credit bubble that will soon burst, perhaps in the next year. When it does burst, this vaunted US military machine the world is so afraid of, will die an ignominious death.

  All of these ’elections’ were trumpeted as ’major’ elections according to the neocons, all were ’landmarks’ , according to the US mass media, yet all were done while a supposedly sovereign nation was occupied by a foreign power, which clearly violates the UN Charter as well as common sense. How can anyone in their right mind think that an occupied nation can have free and open ’elections’, the very concept is an absurdity. No where else in history you will find a world power occupying a country while that country was supposedly ’electing’ its ’leaders’, excepting the history of the Communists, all who were experts at perverting the truth: Trotskyites, Stalinists, Maoists. The neocons that have been running our country are no different than these power hungry thugs, let me assure you.

  That the US has a far more efficient propaganda machine than the great totalitarian powers of the 20th Century comes to no surprise when so many of its citizens continue to exhibit the same overwhelming ignorance that this fool who calls himself the "Equalizer" clearly displays in his article. Pull your head out of your ass, for the Love of Christ, or have the good grace to stay out of the debate. Tell me, Equalizer, how can ignorance, especially the glaring ignorance you so obviously display to all in this article, entitle you to any debate?

  • 19 December 2005, 06:55

    But surely you don’t believe all 300 political parties and 7000+ candidates were secretly controlled by the US? And not one ran on a platform calling for the US to leave.

    Of course there is still a military presence there and I expect there will be for another 20 years. However, I do expect a significant scale back once Iraqi forces are better able to deal with their own security issues. I disagree with your implication that Iraqi people cannot express themselves politically just because US troops are around. The US occupied Japan and Germany for a long time after WWII yet they became powerful democratic nations. And I believe any Iraqi would smack you across the head for suggesting their last election was illegal.

    I’m not saying this task will be easy or graceful. In fact it is messy, mistakes happen and innocents die – like in all wars. But you can’t expect a country to transition from a dictatorship to a democracy problem-free. Indeed, the terrorist insurgents – many who are foreigners – are the ones who have directly and indirectly caused the most harm to the Iraqi people. Why? Because they can’t stand to see democracy succeed in Iraq. A democratic Iraq would represent a major contradiction to their theocratic world outlook.

    Facts are facts and you can’t deny that Saddam is out of power and awaiting trial, a constitution has been written and approved, and the Iraqi people came out en masse to participate in the MOST legitimate, democratic election in that region EVER. If you had your way, Saddam would still be president of Iraq.

    Again, I ask you, what purpose did the US have in facilitating a democratic election that will lead to a loosening of the US’s control of the country and its oil?

    – Equalizer

  • 20 December 2005, 01:09

    Gosh, I wish we could have an occupying foreign army here in the good ole US of A. Just think how it would enhance our already brilliant democracy. Maybe we could lobby the Congress to have them strike a deal with Vicente Fox of Mexico for him to send a few divisions of Mexico’s finest troops to help us along in our quest for a perfect democracy. Gee, I really envy those lucky Iraqis.

  • 21 December 2005, 00:59

    Equalizer you make very little sense because you ignore facts that do not suit your preceptions and your core beliefs about White America (from which came your leadership).

    It is hard to take a stance to counter your reply without making it seem like an ad homeinum attack. Your "straw man" style of argument is all well and fine for a basic Pol-Sci or English Lit class but it does not yield to analysis of the Iraq situation from which a truer understanding can be achieved.

    And this blog is limited in space (and time as topics roll off and followups become impossible to track) — But I will make a deal with you; how ’bout we take this discussion to a newsgroup, say, soc.culture.arab? Or, perhaps to a entirely new dedicated newsgroup to discuss just these topics from your original post and your followup reply.

    It may be worthwhile for others who are reading this thread to follow ws there and participate in distilling the thinking?

    How ’about it?

  • 11 March 2007, 22:40

    For the Equalizer: You should change your name to Neocon Enforcer. Or better yet, Neocon Fertilizing Agent. The last Iraqi election was a complete sham, much like the last few national elections in the US were, complete shams. Read and weep, chickenhawk:

    The notion that these elections put power in the hands of the Iraqi people is exploded by dissecting how they were organized, what Iraqi voters did and didn’t know, and how power will now actually be parceled out.

    When Iraqis voted, they chose among over 100 different lists of candidates associated with different political parties or trends. The rules for this election and the lists presented to Iraqis were both approved beforehand by the so- called High Commission for Elections, which had been appointed by U.S. viceroy Bremer (who also appointed a commission in charge of Iraq’s media). This U.S.-picked Commission had authority to disqualify any slate the U.S. disapproved of.

    Three slates dominated the election:

    The United Iraqi Alliance, an Islamic religious coalition of Shiite parties and individuals, sponsored by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and comprised mainly of the two largest Shiite parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party;

    The Iraqi List, headed by U.S.-appointed interim prime minister and long-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi, which includes prominent Sunnis and Shiites who favor a secular government; and,

    The Kurdish Alliance, made up overwhelmingly of members of the two main Kurdish pro-independence parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party.

    While there are certain political and ideological differences between these groups, and tensions with the U.S. occupiers, all are headed by compradors (pro-imperialist class forces) who are beholden to U.S. imperialism for their current status in Iraq and who favor some form of dependence on imperialism—regardless of what the masses of Iraqi people want and need.

    In other words, this was an election where the key issues facing Iraq’s people were not and could not be debated, and where the main views of Iraq’s people were not and could not be expressed. And where the main parties running were those who (one way or another) were willing to "play the game" (for now) with the U.S. occupiers.

    For instance, recent polls claim that 82% of Sunnis and 69% of Shi’as want U.S. forces to leave Iraq. Yet the people’s views on this most important question could not be expressed in these elections. Before and after the election, U.S. officials, including Bush, had made clear that U.S. forces were not leaving Iraq anytime soon; meanwhile current Iraqi president Ghazi al-Yawer declared it was "complete nonsense" to ask the occupiers to leave—a position seconded by Prime Minister Allawi.

    Or take the question of Iraq’s oil. Due in large measure to popular pressure, Iraq’s petroleum industry was nationalized following the 1958 revolution and oil is still closely identified with Iraqi sovereignty. Yet the people’s views on the future of oil could not be expressed in these elections. Meanwhile, top leaders of both the United Iraqi Alliance and the Iraqi List, such as Ahmad Chalabi and Allawi, have been speaking out in favor of opening Iraq’s oil industry up to foreign capital. Antonia Juhasz (AlterNet, January 27) writes that this past December while visiting Washington, DC, Iraq’s current Finance Minister and a top member of the United Iraqi Alliance, stated that such a move would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies."

    It seems clear that most Iraqi voters had no idea that such moves were afoot. Bob Herbert of the New York Times (Jan. 31) wrote that half of Iraq’s voters thought they were voting for a new president. Most Iraqis knew neither who they were actually voting for—of 7,700 candidates over 7,000 remained anonymous for fear of being killed—nor the platforms of the various lists. According to Professor As’ad Abukhalil, Allawi’s own newspaper, Al- Sabah, reported that only 7% of Iraqis knew the agendas and programs of the different electoral lists.

    So much for ’globalizing Democracy’, numb-nuts.