As anticipated and predicted, the Iraq elections are a HUGE success.

Sunnis and Shiites are going to love the Jewish estate in Iraq.

By the way I have been following on the allegations of fraud by Sunnis and Shiites alike so this one is going to be one to keep an eye on.

I wonder what the Kurds are doing meanwhile.

I'm sorry things aren't going better in Iraq after the elections.

Violence Rages in Post-Poll Iraq

Iraq has returned to its violent ways after a brief lull during a fairly peaceful poll - secured partly by an informal ceasefire by Sunni rebels hoping for representation in parliament.
...
Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president who met Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy in Iraq, in his Kurdish power base of Sulaimaniya has urged the Sunnis to join a consensus government.

"Without the Sunni parties there will be no consensus government ... without consensus government there will be no unity, there will be no peace," he said.

Originally posted by skippytjc
I don’t want what I am about to say construed as baiting, but where are all the Iraq naysayer’s on this issue?
...
I think the "haters" will still somehow taint it...

You crack me up, man! Thanks.

The problem with Iraq is that Bush thinks that Iraq is only the nation of one group the one friendly to the US, the Shiites but that's not so it has other main groups that make the Iraqi nation.

Giving victory to one group and undermining the rest is just going to add fire to the wood.

Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are all Iraqis, and they most of the time do not like each other.

So perhaps when US starts to accept that these groups can not work without each other rather than trying to get rid of the ones that are the most trouble makers then perhaps it will be a compromised in Iraq.

100 Iraq Election Winners Denied Their Seats, Linked To Baath Party

Iraq's electoral commission is striking off 100 candidates who ran in the 15 December general elections for links with the banned Baath party.

Adil al-Lami, a commisson official, said: "A court has overruled the commission's initial decision to allow them to run and we are now applying the law and removing the names of about 100 candidates.

english.aljazeera.net...

Democracy includes the right for everyone to run for office.

Even under the US puppet regime former Baath party members were allowed to hold office provided they denounce their former party.

Democracy on a stick.....

Marge the US has bent over backwards to include the Sunnis in the political process, but one can only show you the door, it’s you that has to walk through it. The Sunnis, lets face it, are a minority, as such, they are not going to have the supremacy that they enjoyed under Saddam. See the problem yet? They have to accept that in a democratic society majority rules, and since they are not the majority they have to take what they can get. If they don’t, they will only make themselves a target because they are holding everyone back, and because quite frankly they are being a pain in the arse. It's nothing the US is doing wrong, it just that the Sunnis are stuck on Saddam mode.

Democracy includes the right for everyone to run for office.

Where my dear did you ever get that idea? Is everyone in the US allowed to run for office? Don't think so. Besides, democracy also means that Courts can make decisions regarding the law, and in this case a court struck down the right of former Baath Party members to run.

[edit on 25-12-2005 by WestPoint23]

Yes westpoint Sunnis were the ruling tribe when Saddam but not all Sunnis are guilty of Saddam doings.

The problem is that giving the Shiites rule now is actually making the Sunnis that has nothing to do with what Saddam did pay for the mistakes of their leaders in Saddam time.

Plus Shiites are in a retaliation mood they are not all nice they are in witch hunt to get retribution.

That is the problem, and US seems to favor Shiites, while letting Kurds take over the lands in the north.

Freedom is for everybody not one group over the other.

How many "elections" do we need until we see they want us out and that this is a first rate farce? How many more dead Americans? These elections were RIGGED to the core, I'm surprised Chalabi's CIA puppet party didn't win, still they were RIGGED. Vietnam had several elections too, and we know how that ended (10,000,000 dead Vietnamese and 58,000 dead Americans).

[edit on 25-12-2005 by Nakash]

The problem is that giving the Shiites rule now is actually making the Sunnis that has nothing to do with what Saddam did pay for the mistakes of their leaders in Saddam time.

Giving? What do you mean giving? The Shiia have more numbers that's the reason they are winning more seats, it has nothing to do with giving.

Freedom is for everybody not one group over the other.

I know it is, and the Sunnis are getting representation, it’s just that they want more then they are entitled to.

I’m going to completely ignore Nakash’s post, I don't want to waste my time responding to it.

www.nytimes.com... ony1.html?

“We once lived in a good place, but that was before the war. It got expensive after the war so we moved out. Now everything costs so much. The rents are too high. Food is not cheap. My husband can’t find work, so we live here. This war did little to help us. We are worse now than before. And to make matters worse, I am pregnant again.”

- NAHAD JABAR JOUAD, center
Living in an abandoned building with her husband and children More Photos >


By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: December 26, 2005
IN Iraq, nobody knows, and few in authority seem concerned to count, just how many civilians have been killed and injured. Soon it will be three years since the American-led invasion. The estimates of those killed run into the tens of thousands, the numbers of wounded two or three times the number who lost their lives. Even President Bush, estimating recently that 30,000 civilians may have been killed, acknowledged that was no more than an abstraction from unofficial calculations, not a Pentagon count.

Was it all worth it?

Why not look at the bigger picture? It's easy to cherry pick.

An ABC News poll in Iraq, conducted with Time magazine and other media partners, includes some remarkable results: Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead.

Surprisingly, given the insurgents' attacks on Iraqi civilians, more than six in 10 Iraqis feel very safe in their own neighborhoods, up sharply from just 40 percent in a poll in June 2004. And 61 percent say local security is good — up from 49 percent in the first ABC News poll in Iraq in February 2004.

Average household incomes have soared by 60 percent in the last 20 months (to $263 a month), 70 percent of Iraqis rate their own economic situation positively, and consumer goods are sweeping the country. In early 2004, 6 percent of Iraqi households had cell phones; now it's 62 percent. Ownership of satellite dishes has nearly tripled, and many more families now own air conditioners (58 percent, up from 44 percent), cars, washing machines and kitchen appliances.

Link

Was it all worth it?

That remains to be seen, history will show if it was worth it or not.

[edit on 26-12-2005 by WestPoint23]