The Iraq elections have not made us safer: Widespread accusations of fraud in Iraq.

posted Tuesday, 27 December 2005

The Iraq elections, like the capture of Saddam, have not made us any safer. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have refused to accept the final election results, saying they were fraudulent. That is hardly surprising, given the fact that the first two elections were rigged as well. There are now massive protests, which will only lead to more violence in Iraq, which will only lead to more attacks against our servicemembers.

The Bush administration set the example for Iraq to follow by rigging the first election, as documented by the New Yorker here. So, it is hardly surprising that someone might follow their example and do a little bit of vote-rigging themselves. This is not a matter of wanting to return Saddam back to power; the article points out that a new mass grave was found dating back to the days of Saddam:

In the Shiite holy city of Karbala, municipal workers doing maintenance work uncovered remains that police believed were part of a mass grave thought to date back to 1991, when Saddam Hussein's regime put down a Shiite uprising in the south.

On Tuesday, the remains discovered on Monday were sent for testing in an effort to identify the bodies, Karbala police spokesman Rahman Mashawy said. He did not say how many bodies were found and the police claim could not be independently verified.

These marches are a call for common decency and full and fair elections. The Iraqi government's own election monitoring commission shows at least 35 legitimate complaints of vote fraud. These allegations could total tens of thousands of votes.

And just to show how poorly the Iraqis view Bush, Ahmed Chalabi's new political party failed to gain a single seat in the new Iraqi parliament. That just goes to show how little the Iraqi people think of the Americans and their allies. This means that the massive propaganda effort by the Bush administration to trumpet the Good News about Iraq as though it were the Second Coming of Jesus has not only failed miserably, it has backfired in a drastic way.

tags: demonstrations protests violence iraq polls elections saddam

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The Iraq elections have not made us safer: Widespread accusations of fraud in Iraq.