Those Iraqi voters were cheering the victory of Islamic fundamentalism.

They knew they had the numbers to dominate the election.

Ayatollah Sistani forced Bush into that election timetable months ago, but the media lets him spin it as his "resolve" .....ugh.

Bush is spinning the election into HIS triumph, but, it was actually Islamic fundamentalism that triumphed.

Bin Laden must be smiling. He targeted Saddam for assassination for years because Hussein suppressed the Islamic forces from becoming too powerful.

Ironically, it's the Christians and the secularists who are being forced underground, thanks to Bush's con job on the American people.

that we get to tell them who to vote for...

than a contained Saddam?

of this thread.

Are you arguing against democracy?

fundamentalist government in Iraq OVER a contained threat? If we were there as a means of protecting our national security, please explain how an extremist fundamentalist government furthers that end.

When you have answered my question, I will consider answering yours.

I would rather see a secular Parliamentary government, but, hey. it's not my country. Also, Sistani is considered a moderate there, and I'm not sure whether electing religious leaders will automatically translate to a theocracy.

I would suggest it was the other way around. YOU WERE TRYING TO TRAP ME into suggesting that I don't support Democracy...mob rule is not democracy.

Sorry, I don't get it.

there now.

And I do think this govt' will be more extreme.

I read the OP again, your point seems fairly clear.

To me anyway.

individual's right to their own relgion.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

They have voted in a fundamentalist, theocratic, Shiite regime. How long do you think that theocratic administration will permit any semblance of democracy? How long do you think it'll be before they're under full Shari'a law?

This is what most of us have been worried about from the very beginning of this hopeless fiasco.

You can't spell "quagmire" without I R A Q.

they've voted for a "constitutional congress" - there's still going to be an interim government. The real elections are in December.

Also, this vote was not winner take all - there is still a secular voice. And Sistani has always opposed a theocracy. There is still hope that a reasonable government can be set up.

The bigger problem will be the Sunni, and their continuing insurgency.

and its willingness to protect Bush to gain control down the road.

and it was one of the reasons for his schism with Moqtada al-Sadr.
Sistani wants an Islamic state, but not a top down - mullah controlled one like Iran's.


http://www.cfr.org/background/background_iraq_sistani.php



Now, SCIRI and the Badr Brigade - I'm not sure what they want. They've got ties to Iran. But I really question the idea others on this thread have posted concerning Iranian influence. I don't think we'd see some kind of merger of southern Iraq and Iran - they may share the same religion, but Iraqi's are Arab and Iranian's are Persian. As far as I understand, they don't see themselves as the same peoples.

Especially when more US christians are pushing for the End Times. Their rhetoric and evangelism in the region is not appreciated and NOT going unnoticed.

easily as the GOP does here. Bushies thought their "product" Allawi could be sold.

Islamic Theocracy is Iran's form of government.

The people of Iraq will freely vote themselves a Theocracy?

I won't make that bet.

That's the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution Iraq.

Yes, I'd say the Iraqi people "freely voted" themselves a theocracy, as that's pretty much what SCIRI is.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shi'i resistance group also known as the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), was formed in Iran in 1982 to provide an opposition to Iraqi aggression against Iran. Following the Iran-Iraq war, the organization continued to operate with the aim of toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. SCIRI was directly supported with funds by Tehran and with arms by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. The movement advocated theocratic rule for Iraq and conducted a low-level, cross-border guerrilla war against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/sciri.htm

Which is why Sharif Ali bin Hussein was laughing today when he said:

"Americans are in for a shock," adding that one day they would realize, "We've got 150,000 troops here protecting a country that's extremely friendly to Iran, and training their troops."

A lopsided majority of votes, 72 percent, went to the United Iraqi Alliance list, topped by a Shiite cleric who lived in Iran for many years and whose Sciri party has close ties to Iran's clerical regime.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/04/MNGSMB5MDT1.DTL

Al Sistani is Iranian.

That was very informative.

I think I'll take my bet back.

I shoulda taken your bet FIRST. Duhhhhh! *smack*

:D

Really tho, it's rather difficult to see how bush could possibly have f*cked up more than he has; he gets rid of bin Laden's enemy Hussein, who spent 30 years trying to keep Islamic extremism down and was used by the USA to keep Iran at bay and Iraq secular, and handed Iraq over to the Islamic extremist IRANIAN faction.

Myself, I want the Iraqis to have what THEY want, and if that's an Islamic theocracy, so be it...altho I pity very much the women of Iraq, who under Hussein enjoyed far more freedom & equality than most, and certainly won't any longer.

But when one takes bush's goals and compares to what he's done...wowzah. Biggest F*ck-up Ever.

Now....who will win the eventual Holy War?

Would you make THAT bet?

Or rather, we voted ourselves one step closer to being a radical Christian Theocracy.

The problem is we interfered. I'm beginning to think that the Prime Directive of Star Trek really is a good idea. Whenever the United States interferes, nothing good comes of it. Of the countries we've bombed since WWII, how many have become democracies? I'll give you a hint, it's the same as the number of WMDs discovered in Iraq.

and I wish we did abide by it.

he was backing up bin Laden? nice.
Another nice byproduct here is that when Bush wants to attack Iran, Iraq will be right there to defend her.
Seems the axis of evil just tilted even more threateningly towards Israel, yet ironically, some of the more hawkish Jews were behind Bush in his most excellent mid-eastern adventure.
What fun.
Meanwhile, we learn Rumsfeld offered not once, but TWICE to resign over abu Ghraib. This is a huge story, and I wish to hell Rumsfled had been asked if had ever done such a thing last year, before the election. This development is further proof that Bush can't admit mistakes- can't tolerate reality.
It also means torture has his full stamp of approval.
What fun indeed.

the Shia's compatriots and Sistani's homies.

rotfl!!! You guys're cracking me up! :D :D :D

Seems that a party must hold a 2/3 majority in their parliament to form a government...so, some coalescing must be done.

from www.juancole.com:



...report that initial voting returns now leaking out from Baghdad and some southern, Shiite provinces, suggest that the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shiite religious parties blessed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, is getting 72 percent of the vote. It won't get that on a nation-wide basis, since it won't have done well in the areas north and west of the capital. But it certainly will form the next government. Allawi's list is likely to end up with less than 40 seats in the 275-seat parliament.

Even so, the UIA will need a coalition partner, since it needs a 2/3s majority in parliament to form a government. One intriguing possibility, mentioned by Burns and Filkin, is that the Shiites will go into coalition with the Kurds, who think they may get over 20% of the seats in parliament. Such a government would be stable if the coalitions held together, since these two big blocs could certainly deliver more than 66% of the votes in parliament. But the two are ideologically poles apart.

Should get very interesting, indeed.

But however it turns out, it's one huge FU by bush.

Oh well. He was warned. Over & over & over & over & over again.

Somewhere in my naive dreams, I believed that this war was the worst that could happen.

And if we would get out, it would right it self eventually.

Now I can see it isn't going to happen that way, whether the U.S. leaves or not, it's just a mess.

Dick Cheney in April 1991, then Defense Secretary:

If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein,you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists?

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2072479

President GHW Bush, 1998;

"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

http://www.rense.com/general43/quote.htm

James Webb, former Sec. of Navy under Ronald Reagan, Decorated Marine Veteran:

"Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years? …In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets…. Nations such as China can only view the prospect of an American military consumed for the next generation by the turmoil of the Middle East as a glorious windfall."

http://www.sftt.org/article09302002a.html

Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Head of Central Command for U.S.:

"It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot, and are hot to go to war, see it another…We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started."

Hawks in the Bush administration may be making deadly miscalculations on Iraq, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's Middle East envoy.

"I'm not sure which planet they live on"

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/10/17/zinni

Republican Dissent on Iraq

Full page ad in Wall Street Journal by major GOP contributors:

"Mr. President, …The candidate we supported in 2000 promised a more humble nation in our dealings with the world. We gave him our votes and our campaign contributions. That candidate was you. We feel betrayed. We want our money back. We want our country back…. A Billion Bitter enemies will rise out of this war."
- Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2003

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/001444.html

General William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency:

"Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends…. I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

General Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command:

"The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

in Kurdish dominated territory. That should provide for more than a little friction since the Kurds envisioned a Kurdish state that would own the fields.

.

Iraq and Iran will be at peace with each other and united against neoconservative colonialism.

is on the horizon because the big money earth rulers KNOW that the present population is unsustainable.

They can laugh it off by telling the rapture crowd of Christian fundies it's Armageddon.

Any guess as to which icon of Christian fundamentalism will be targeted by the Islamic fundamentalists? I think it will be places like Pat Robertson's complex, or Billy Graham, or Bob Jones University or whoever they see as controlling the Christian message.

I fear they will mistakenly attack a historic landmark like St. Patrick's Cathedral.

on how long it'll be before they're under full Shari'a law and allied with Iran?

...and all we can do is sit here and say "we tried to warn you!" It's such a hopeless feeling.

From the BBC Online
Dated Friday February 4 16:03 GMT (8:03 am PST)

Shia candidates lead Iraqi poll

New partial figures show Iraq's main Shia Muslim coalition has maintained its strong lead in the country's landmark elections, officials say.
The results are based on 35% of ballots cast last weekend.

The United Alliance list, backed by Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has polled 2.2 million votes out of the 3.3 million counted so far.

The list of candidates led by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi polled more than 579,700 votes.

Read more.

So, with 35% of the votes cast, the Shias have about two-thirds of the votes.

Is that ironic or what?

.

Neither do the Sunni, nor any other muslims.

push hard for a Sunni contingent to share power. That would be the wisest course and I feel that al Sistani is a wise person.

Unfortunately, his decisions will come face to face with Bush's bull in the china cabinet actions in the region.

I also heard some months ago that Iraqi Christians were not faring well there.

Couple that with the resentment towards those American evangelists who are there currently trying to convert Muslims.

It will get worse.