The Iraq Elections

The elections in Iraq have not improved the situation there but only those who had spent a lot of time at the kool-aid stand thought they would. Jazz pointed out yesterday the Right wing blogs largely silent on Iraq election disparity. One exception is John Cole who has refused to drink the kool-aid and has reported on the problems without comment. Today Juan Cole tells us about the Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005. The entire post is a must read but I'm going to emphasize the last one, The Bush administration wanted free elections in Iraq. As we have all seen Democracy is the middle east was the last reason given for the invasion and occupation when all others evaporated in a sea of lies. In fact as Professor Cole points out Democracy in Iraq was the last thing on the minds of the bush administration.

This allegation is simply not true, as I and others pointed out last January. I said then, and it is still true:

' Moreover, as Swopa rightly reminds us all, the Bush administration opposed one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to this small, elite group.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter, Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly what they did. '

As we can see the original intent was not to replace a tyrant with a Democracy but to replace an unfriendly tyrant with a friendly one. Well that didn't work out and the free elections in Iraq mean that Chalabi Lacks Votes Needed to Win Spot in Iraqi Assembly.

BAGHDAD, Dec. 26 -- Unexpectedly low support from overseas voters has left Ahmed Chalabi -- the returned Iraqi exile once backed by the United States to lead Iraq -- facing a shutout from power in this month's vote for the country's first full-term parliament since the 2003 invasion.