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I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants.
I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".
Source: Iraq the Model
For those of you who think the Iraqi Election on January 30, 2005 was a turning point in the Iraq War, it wasn't. We tried the same thing during the Vietnam War. Check this out:
"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."
I will once again repeat that this war in Iraq is unwinnable. Like Vietnam, there are outside forces heavily supporting the resistance fighters in Iraq with munitions and money and fighters who are crossing the borders for nothing more than a chance to kill American soldiers and anyone acting in support of them. The huge difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War is that Vietnam was a tactical war, whereas the war in Iraq has developed into a strategic one -- and there's a nasty difference between the two.
We could declare false victory in Vietnam and walk away without repercussions. Where Iraq is concerned, when we walk out of there in defeat, as we most assuredly will, we will have created a united enemy of many peoples and nations, and we will be left without the future support of most of our most trusted former allies.
When we voted to re-elect George W. Bush to a second term, we lost our innocence as a people. Whereas our international neighbors, and even our enemies, once considered there to be a vast difference between the people of the United States and the government of the United States, the election results of November 2, 2004 caused the people of the world to look upon us in an entirely different light.
I remember when one tough old CIA interrogator -- who speaks perfect Arabic -- went to Guantanimo Bay to interview the suspected al Qaeda prisoners held there. Among the other horrors he witnessed, there was an 80-year old man laying in his own excrement in the hot Cuban sun in a 6 by 6 foot cage. I guess the Red Cross wasn't visiting that day. Anyway, he came away realizing at least 90% of the people being held there had never been part of al Qaeda or the Iraqi resistance in any form. He said, "If they weren't al Qaeda when they went in, they will be al Qaeda the moment they are released."
Most of the prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison, where all the tortures and humiliations occurred, were as innocent as those held at Guantanimo Bay. A lot of them wound up at Abu Ghraib because a bomb went off on some road, killing American and Coalition forces, so the troops charged the local houses, arresting all the men of fighting age they could get their hands on. Surely they must have seen something, so they went to Abu Ghraib for "interrogation". That's where Rumsfeld's boys could get at them without anybody knowing.
Who are Rumsfeld's boys? Well, not long after 9/11, Rumsfeld formed a secret group in the Pentagon of around 40 operatives. Rumsfeld didn't want a lot of red tape when he ordered them to snatch suspected al Qaeda supporters from various nations, including Iraq, so his clandestine group went about their business totally under the radar, kidnapping or simply murdering the suspects. They used Lear jets to get around, and they didn't bother with customs and international laws and all that other stuff. They just did it. Look up the Phoenix Program on a search engine sometime. We did the same thing during the Vietnam War, only we didn't have Lear jets at the time.
Rumsfeld's boys wanted to infiltrate al Qaeda and the resistance fighters in general. They knew enough about the Koran and Muslim Law to know the adherents are never to even touch a dog. They knew it was forbidden for a male to be seen naked, and homosexuality? Forget it -- that's a capital offense! So they posed the victims in those photographs before they released, them, telling them to join the resistance and report back to them or their whole village was going to get a gander at those photographs. That's why they did it, and that's why the soldiers didn't fear any repercussions. They were, after all, only following blatantly illegal orders from "military intelligence officers" who were never there...
Originally posted by Souljah
Different War, Same False Hope
The Iraq election was a success and the country is a democracy. I had my doubts about this war but now that it did indeed succeed I have no more negative opinions on it. Bush's leadership had freed a nation and made the world a better place.
Originally posted by Simulacra
Congrats to president Bush for completely restructing a societies culture. Now ancient Iraq will reign in American freedom and all of it's Arabic culture will be misconfigured, lost, replaced and eventually forgotten.
Welcome to Meccadonalds. Would you like some fries with that?
Originally posted by Simulacra
Welcome to Meccadonalds. Would you like some fries with that?
Originally posted by djohnsto77
These elections were a great success by any measure and the most free fair elections that any Arab country has seen.