Bu$h played with the Iraqi elections?

WASHINGTON -- In the months before the Iraqi elections in January, President Bush approved a plan to provide covert support to certain Iraqi candidates and political parties but rescinded the proposal because of congressional opposition, current and former government officials said Saturday.

In a statement issued in response to questions about a report in the next issue of the New Yorker magazine, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that "in the final analysis, the president determined and the United States government adopted a policy that we would not try -- and did not try -- to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office."

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Several senior Bush administration officials disputed that, although they recalled renewed discussions within the administration last fall about how the United States might counter what was seen as extensive Iranian support to pro- Iranian Shiite parties.

Any clandestine U.S. effort to influence the Iraqi elections, or to provide particular support to candidates or parties seen as amenable to working with the United States, would have run counter to Bush's assertions that the vote would be free and unfettered.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0717-04.htm