POLITICS: Thousands of Iraqis Were Unable to Vote

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
What utter hypocrisy!

Substantiated facts:

Tens of thousand of people were turned away from voting.
The result of the elections is scheduled to be announced a week away.
World leaders have been critical of the election practices in Iraq.
The election was supervised by an authority appointed by the occupying forces, led by *insert name here*

Facts yet to be substantiated:

Voter turnouts, election results.
Why tens of thousands of people were turned away from voting.
Any other irregularities.



It seems some of us have no patience for the facts to come in.

Off_The_Street, if you wish to defend the package of lies and the constant changing of expressed objectives by the US government's officials in their corrupt foreign program, that to me and others would fall under the banner of "hypocrisy".

If you believe that speaking against a corrupt government is somehow anti-American or unAmerican, that's too bad.

Me, I'll stay consistent and call untruth for what it is.

The fact that we cannot trust the Bush administration to appoint officials and construct systems to run a fair election is well grounded. Exactly what happened in the Iraq election, I would be very interested to find out. Wash over it as some great success and celebration if it makes you feel good, in the face of all contrary evidence. Maybe you don't need to deal in the evidence.

I will refrain from labelling that behavior, but perhaps it does not support the "mission" of ATS.

10,.000's were not able to vote. Well I've heard reports but since you're so hell bent on waiting to get the final word there's no official report on numbers yet, just word of mouth that it happened.

The election results are scheduled to be announced in a week. Well, if they were being announced tommorow would you not just be saying that it was fixed all along therefore they didn't need to count the votes? Does this wait just possibly mean that they are counting and trying to get accurate results?

World leaders were critical. Well I seem to remember that the leaders of France and Germany praised the election so I'm interested to see what world leaders you are reffering to. I am linking a story that records the praise from the UN Secretary General, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and even IRAN!

middle-east.news.designerz.com...

... or, you could say, as this guy did not express his right to vote, then perhaps he has no right to express why?


"GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: I do not believe that the election is legitimate, the election is held under the occupation. The occupying power has modified the basic rules in Iraq as to who is an Iraqi and who is not. The election was shoved down our throat because all the major parties, including Allawi's party, requested that the election be postponed. That was in November. And before even the independent electoral commission could decide on the request, that President Bush said he does not want the election to be postponed and Ambassador Negroponte said, oddly enough, it came from Fallujah. He was in Fallujah, and declared that the elections will be held on the January 30. It is an Iraqi election, it is not a U.S. election, it is not Negroponte's election, it is the Iraqi people's election. So, if the Iraqi parties wanted to postpone the election, they should have been able to do so without the interference of the United States government.

Anyway, having done the election now, it was forced down our throat, a lot of people have boycotted it. The Sunnis have boycotted the elections. Some of the Shias boycotted it. Muktadar Al Sadr faction boycotted the election. Al Khalaf faction boycotted the election. There is a resistance to the occupation in Iraq. This resistance stems from the fact that our life has been, for the last 22 months, deteriorating day and night and we have not seen any improvement in our condition for the last 22 months, nor that anything has been reconstructed. The telephone system is bad, the electricity is worse, the security condition is worse. A lot of people are saying, why do I vote? What does the government do for me? They did absolutely nothing. The shocking thing is that the conditions after 22 months of occupation is a lot worse in every single aspect of life than with Saddam Hussein, after 12 years of sanction.

While I'm talking to you I just heard two bombs exploding not too far from here. I did not vote and I will not vote to any one of those people who came on the back of the American banks. I do not see any change because there is no will to reconstruct anything. There is no will to improve the life of the Iraqis. It is going to take another two years and a lot of will. Mind you, in 1991, with the huge destruction in Iraq, we, the Iraqi people, despite the sanctions and with no help from anybody, we were able to restore the electricity, we were able to restore the water, the sewage and in six months we were able to rebuild the country in less than a year. Now that time has gone. The U.S. had 22 months occupation and they have not fixed a single thing in Iraq. We are still getting 2,000 to 2,200 calories on the ration system. We were told that Saddam Hussein was stealing our money both in the palaces and keeping us poor and hungry. But now after 22 months, we are still getting 2200 calories or sometimes less.

Halliburton -- we have added crisis right now of petrol, Iraq was an exporting country of diesel fuel and refined oil products. Since the occupation, we have been importing oil from Turkey. No one fixes the refineries. There is a huge queue of cars waiting to get oil or petrol. And the Congress, the U.S. Congress said in 2003, May 2003, seven out of 18 governmentals had more than 16 hours of electricity. Now we are getting two hours of electricity right in Baghdad. I am lucky today, I have electricity from 7:00 to 9:00 and that is going to be all. Until late in the evening, maybe, I don't know when, I'll get the electricity.

So, all those factors will indicate that the people are discontent, the people are resentful of the presence of the American forces, that the people are dissatisfied with the occupation, because they have not seen any improvement in their life. Unemployment is very high; it's at about 60%. People are starving. This is the basis for the resistance. It's not the Mussabu Al Zarqawi and Abu, I don't know who, or the terrorists coming from the outside of Iraq. It is the indigenous Iraqi resistance. While we were told that Saddam Hussein was torturing us, we are finding after 22 months that the Americans are torturing us, the British are torturing us, the Danish are torturing us and now we discover that the Iraqi forces, the ING is torturing us. So, instead of one having one torturer, now we have four torturers. And you want us to be happy with the election."



Al-Mukhtar is a retired engineer. He doesn't read like an "insurgent" (did ATS ever get around to defining what one of those is?), but nor is he afraid to explain the source of his resentment.


www.democracynow.org.../01/31/1517201

An opinion from someone there and he exercised his right not to vote. He didn't have that right under Hussein, he had to vote or he would have been killed. Now he has the right to freely protest the election. 8 million or so of his fellow citizens thought differnently though.

"World Leaders" mention must have meant Ayman al-Zawahri (Zarqawi).
Interesting that "leaders" is plural where Zarqawi is simply singular, unless you add in that he is the #2 man for Osama and then you speculate that Osama must be a "world leader." In such a case, with two of them saying such, then the plural "world leaders" would be appropriate. Then the question that begs to be answered is since when did Osama and Zarqawi become "world leaders" when neither are leaders of any country?

Hmm, just who would those "world leaders" be, exactly?

Maybe the reference was to Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Jimmy Carter, Barbara Bower, Micheal Moore, Al Franken, CNN, Reuters, the BBC, etc., etc.?




seekerof

Originally posted by jukyu
If you have to have 100 percent security and accuracy guaranteed before you hold an election, there would not be an election held on this planet.

Well the last Australian election that I toke part in provided this type of proper security and accuracy and therefore was considered vaild. Does that mean our election was not held on the planet Earth?

So you're telling me that your election was absolutely flawless and every single vote was counted? There wasn't a machine or 2 that malfunctioned or a few ballots that for whatever reason were thrown out because they weren't marked properly?

Masked Avatar says:

“Off_The_Street, if you wish to defend the package of lies and the constant changing of expressed objectives by the US government's officials in their corrupt foreign program…”

I do not wish to do so; I dislike the present administration and voted against Bush in both 2000 and 2004. However, I am not so paranoid as to believe that every politidal act with which I disagree is a Huge Secret Plot, nor am I so dishonest as to quote my own paranoid quacking about such Huge Secret Plots as the truth were it just my opinion.

“If you believe that speaking against a corrupt government is somehow anti-American or unAmerican, that's too bad.”

It is not bad, and I commend you for it. Lying, though, which is what one does when he deliberately pushes opinions as fact, is not “unamerican”, it is just wrong.

”Me, I'll stay consistent and call untruth for what it is.”

“Consistency” and “truth” are, in your case, an oxymoron.

”The fact that we cannot trust the Bush administration to appoint officials and construct systems to run a fair election is well grounded.”

And some day you will come up with some evidence for it outside your own hatred and envy … but today is not that day.

”Exactly what happened in the Iraq election, I would be very interested to find out.”

It certainly hasn’t stopped you from making up your mind and pushing your opinions as “facts”, though -- has it?