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As anticipated, the Bush Media are reporting a happy day of electing in Iraq that we're paying $200 billion for. I'll be looking around for some kind of reality check. tex, one of my favorite antiwar.com bloggers, has some scattered reports. This from reporter Chris Albritton on the all important "image spin":
I'm watching CNN International, and the shots of long lines and happy voters are almost all coming from Iraqi Kurdistan where the voters are motivated and the environment is (relatively) safe. The rub is that CNNi is not identifying the images as coming from Kurdistan; the only way I knew it was from up north was the single shot of someone waving a Kurdish flag. But if you don't know what the flag looks like (red, white and green bars with a yellow starburst in the center), as I suspect most Americans don't, you wouldn't know the context of these images. Shi'ites are also coming out in droves in the south. But Sunnis are staying home. I will be surprised if the Sunni vote hits double digits at this point.Albritton also reports:
Nine suicide bombs in Baghdad alone, with at least 20 dead. A bomb went off near the home of the Justice Minister. There are a number of outgoing mortars from my neighborhood in the last 10 minutes.And from Juan Cole:
Although the violence and attacks have been extensive and took place all over the country, the security measures put in prevented massive loss of life. Suicide bombers clearly could not get close enough to crowds to take a big toll.Which would be cool, but the point here is the white former elite wouldn't stand for it--they'd bide their time and then fight (or cheat) to regain power. But BushCo is only concerned about how it plays on TV today, so multinational companies can continue to operate in Iraq under cover of a "democratically elected government." Bottom line, whether it goes well or not, why in the world are we paying in lives and dollars to run another country's elections? Oh, sorry, I forgot: the "war on terror."
On the other hand, if the turnout is as light in the Sunni Arab areas as it now appears, the parliament/ constitutional assembly is going to be extremely lopsided. It would be sort of like having an election in California where the white Protestants all stayed home and the legislature was mostly Latinos, African-Americans and Asians.