They Are Voting In Iraq – Anybody Notice?
Discreetly buried in the back pages of a disillusioned New York Times:
Early Voting in Iraq Is Mostly Smooth
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and STEVEN LEE MYERS
January 29, 2009
BAGHDAD — Thousands of soldiers, police officers, hospital patients and prisoners cast ballots on Wednesday as part of early voting in Iraq’s provincial elections.
At least one act of violence accompanied the voting. Two police officers guarding a polling center south of Kirkuk were killed by gunmen who fired at them from a passing car, according to an official from the Ministry of Interior who spoke on condition of anonymity. The gunmen escaped, the official said.
Overall, however, the voting appeared to go smoothly, Iraqi election officials said.
About 615,000 people, most of them employed by Iraq’s security forces, were eligible to vote Wednesday, three days before Saturday’s election. Government officials said the early balloting would help ensure that security forces would be on duty to protect polling stations on Saturday, when about 14 million more Iraqis are eligible to vote.
“The arrangements we are seeing today are a slap in the face to those who are betting that Iraqis will not go to the ballot box because they are despairing,” Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said in a speech on Wednesday.
More than 14,000 candidates are running for 440 seats on provincial councils in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The election will be delayed in Kirkuk Province, a troubled region where much of Iraq’s oil reserves lie, and in the three provinces of Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region.
The local councils function much like state legislatures, but are also responsible for selecting governors and provincial police chiefs.
Perhaps most important, the councils are a prime source of patronage. They dole out government jobs, social benefits and contracts, each an invaluable asset in a country that has high unemployment rates and significant poverty — but that is expected to embark on a major government-sponsored rebuilding program over the next few years…
Of course most of the "reporters" in our media would rather tear out their eyes than admit what a tremendous victory this represents for our military’s courageous efforts in Iraq.
Indeed, in a few years, if this victory isn’t given away, it will be taught that it was Mr. Obama’s gentle words and foreign aid that brought Democracy to the Middle East.
Despite everything that the war monger George Bush did to prevent it.
Another triumph of Amercan soldiers enabling the hopeless to vote their own future? *YAWN*
Shhh! American Idol is about to start!
Yeah, sad isn’t it? The American military member cannot do one darn good thing can they? They’re either killers (in cold blood), rapists, and why the hell not just say they eat little children for lunch. Of course it’s not news and it’s sad. But on an aside, I was speaking to my cousin who couldn’t wait to get to Pensacola from a small town in AL after finishing nursing school to catch herself a pilot but who is extremely liberal and found one of the few other liberal Navy pilots said that she doesn’t listen to her neighbors or people like my husband anymore because they’re in a war zone and really not “aware” of the damage they’re doing to the world. Of course this is the same woman who complained that her kid had no one to play when I visited them in Spain, but then found out that she wouldn’t let him play with the enlisted kids. She forgot her daddy was enlisted, all of her uncles as well as her grandfather and the cousin she was telling this to.
I can’t stand it. I really can’t. I miss our dad’s generation. There was really only one stand out, back then. He too had brains and military knowledge. But, he too, was a feel sorry for the enemy. Charles Linburgh. As my dad would tell it. When people found out, what kind of a thinker he really was, this country overall made him feel like the dumbass he really was. Now, how did that get role reversed? The dumbasses and their nutty perspective wins out. I miss our dad’s generation.
I dedicate this to Mr. John Galt!!