Sorry George, but Iraq has given you the purple finger

'The Iraqi people gave America the biggest thank you in the best way we could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy Hart, a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself thinking about my late grandmother.

Half blind and a menace behind the wheel of her Chevrolet, she adamantly refused to surrender her car keys. She was convinced that everywhere she drove (flattening the house pets of Philadelphia along the way), people were waving and smiling at her. "They are so friendly!" We had to break the bad news. "They aren't waving with their whole hand, grandma - just with their middle finger."

So it is with Betsy Hart and the other near-sighted election observers. They think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those long-awaited flowers and sweets, when Iraq's voters just gave them the (purple) finger. Judging by the millions of votes already counted, Iraqis have voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed Ayad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA); the second plank in the UIA platform called for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq".

There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi ... and offers facilities to citizens to build homes"; the alliance also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects". In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by the former chief American envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1411273,00.html