Is GWB Attempting to "Fix" the Iraqi Election ?

Apparently the administration has already decided that it does not want ONLY the election returns of 1/31/05 to determine who sits in the power positions of Iraq. Is this the "democracy" we have been so hell bent on promoting?

U.S. Is Suggesting Guaranteed Role for Iraq's Sunnis

The Bush administration is talking to Iraqi leaders about guaranteeing Sunni Arabs a certain number of ministries or high-level jobs in the future Iraqi government if, as is widely predicted, Sunni candidates fail to do well in Iraq's elections.

An even more radical step, one that a Western diplomat said was raised already with an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, is the possibility of adding some of the top vote-getters among the Sunni candidates to the 275-member legislature, even if they lose to non-Sunni candidates.

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Complete article from N.Y. Times found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/international/middleeast/26diplo.html

Answer this: is there ANY CHANCE, ANY CHANCE WHATSOEVER that a "democratically elected" Prime Minister & Parliment (or whatever they want to call themselves) would have the RIGHT to simply THROW OUT Halliburton and all of the other US Companies who have rooted themselves in Iraq?

Worldcom has the telecommunications rights. Who decided that? Do you think the Iraqi's will have a choice in the matter after the "election"?

More relevant to the article, however, the insurgency is a win-win for Bush. If the election goes against them, they'll agree Iraq wasn't ready for the elections... Otherwise, they win as well.

It's all about the oil.

Of COURSE they want to fix the Iraqi "election".

But it will not make anything better in Iraq. More gossamer window dressing to cover the corpses rotting in a pool of oil.

is for the birds. I heard Iraqis didn't bite though. Must be because their skin is not like ours - they don't quite grasp it.

I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily, you know, are a different color than white, can self-govern.
GW Bush

...fix elections.

They've probably known for months who the winner(s) will be. Now it's probably more of a question of how to make it look legitimate.

Welcome to DU, LibInTexas.


"Prosperity is just around the corner." -- Herbert Hoover
"The economy has turned a corner." -- GW Bush

Herbert Hoover = GW Bush

It worked so well here.

/sarcasm

and it well...probabaly sooner than later....he will blame it, all, on the Iraqi people.

those awful LIBERALS in this country, no doubt.

The Iraqi people have nothing even resembling primaries or any kind of input into the electoral process.

It's like taking a CNN poll ... 'Do you want candidate A or candidate B, both of whom were selected by the Bush Administration?'

That's not democracy, it's a joke. And the scary thing is, NOBODY - not even the U.N. or any of the 'old Europe' is addressing it.


:hippie:

As long as there's a U.S. military presence, elections are meaningless.

candidates are for this upcoming election in Iraq? Have they been campaigning all over Iraq?

The CIA calls it blowback - w is drawn to it like a witless fly on smelly manure...

Imagine if you will a certain King George granting Ben Franklin and the fellas an "election" before they revolt..or act as insurgents.

Banana republics have "elections" too.

Bush couldn't fix this election if God himself was on his side. The Iraqi people have made it clear that they don't trust the government placed there now partially because they've been away from Iraq for so long. There's also a majority Shea population.

If the Iraqis actually vote them in, it will be because they want to keep the leader that they're used to in a time of instability. That's what is typically done during a war. Look at Afghanistan. Look at the U.S.

Nonetheless, I don't think it should be assumed that all elections are fixed. We want to make sure the Iraqis have their say. I have been against this occupation because I believe that the Iraqis can create their own country and that we're in the way. I don't want to be in the way of elections where they get their own say unless it can be shown that they're not getting their own say.

I don't blame anyone for not participating.

We talk about weather and long lines (not that what we saw on 11/2 was in any way, shape or form acceptable)...but these people face the very real possiblity of being shot or blown up at polling places.

The violence came just before another blow to U.S. efforts on that election. The largest Sunni Muslim political party in the country announced Monday that it was withdrawing from the ballot.

The withdrawal of the Iraqi Islamic Party leaves the interim government and its U.S. backers unable to point to a single major, established Sunni entity on the Jan. 30 ballot.

"We are convinced that the election will not be general, honest and will not be held in all parts of Iraq," the party's chairman Mohsen Abdul Hamid told a news conference.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28323-2004Dec27.html

One has to wonder if this is just a ploy to force al-Sistrani to agree to "awarding" seats to a number of Sunni candidates just to avoid a civil war. Something that I think is going to happen sooner rather than later, btw.

And I must add, general and honest elections weren't held here, so I can understand how Hamid feels. ;)

...will ensure that the ballot boxes are appropriately stuffed. Who knows how many kids a guy who left the country forty years ago has? They'll invent people if they have to...and you don't lose your citizenship even if you assume citizenship from another country.

The fix is in. The one they want will get it. It might not mean much, though. Vietnam, redux...

to write a new constitution. With the threat of a Sunni boycott there is a great fear, even among the majority Shi'ite, that Sunni's will be under represented in this process therefore insuring future civil unrest.

There is precedent in the Mideast for the sort of arrangement envisioned here, as the article states - Lebanon and Iran have guaranteed representation for certain minority groups.

This doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

problem with this impending election. Although the Sunni Arabs are only 20% of Iraq's population, they are the 20% most needed to legitimize this election and its results. The Sunni areas of Iraq are still very much in violent opposition to the American occupation of the country. There is no reason to believe that any of that violence will cease after this election takes place next month.

With a Sunni boycott of the election, or large numbers of Sunnis afraid to vote for fear of violence against them, the election becomes less legitimate as representing the will of the Iraqi people. Whether right, wrong, or just indifferent, 20% of the population not represented in this election is enough to make the whole exercise pointless.

Let's look at this clearly--this is not a typical election by any stretch of the imagination. This election is a tool of the GWB administration to attempt to force "democracy" down the throats of the Iraqi people. The reality here is that we are attempting to bully this country into a type of government that we want for it, period. Giving legislative seats to "top vote-getters" among the Sunni candidates, even if they do not win the election, is a clear attempt to manipulate the makeup of this new legislature. But why?

BushCo is very concerned that the new legislature will favor the type of religious, Islamic government running neighboring Iran. A government of mullahs is definitely not what we had in mind when we invaded and occupied this country. That type of government will not be favorable to our corporate designs on Iraq and our desire to control the oil flowing out of the country.

We need Sunni representation in the legislature to hopefully reign in any extremist Shiite attempts to form a religious government. We are desperate for the Sunnis to help us get the government we want, but they will not cooperate with us and simply do not want anything to do with us in our effort to control Iraq.

They still have designs on getting back control of that country as they had under Saddam. Although that is highly unlikely to happen, there will clearly be much more violence and death as they continue to fight our presence in the country. The election we are representing as a step closer to democracy may in fact be the tool that leads to a radical Islamic government in Iraq. What will we do then?