But Iraqis Voted Today And....

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But Iraqis Voted Today And....

Post by Michael » January 31st, 2005, 4:48 am

It’s the end of Sunday, January 30, 2005 on the west coast of the 40 continuous United States of America and I’ve now heard that anywhere from 50% to 72% of eligible Iraqi voters turned out to vote on their election day.

As this is the first time in their history that Iraqis have voted for different candidates who were contesting for their votes, it could very well be the first step towards a sovereign, democratic nation of Iraq.

In 1995 and, again, in 2002, Iraqis went to the polls to vote. They voted “yes” or “no” to the question asking them if they still wanted Saddam Hussein to be their leader for life.

In those two elections, the turn out was even better. Over 99% of eligible Iraqis chose to vote over being put to death. Maybe the incentive was stronger.

On a personal note, if, indeed, 50% to 72% of eligible Iraqis went to the polls and exercised their right to vote, I am delighted. To witness the possible birth of a democracy in a nation that has been led by a tyrant for over thirty years in heartening.

If this first step leads to the formation of a truly democratic nation, I’ll be even happier for the Iraqi people. They’ve been punished long enough and they deserve the right to set their own direction.

So, all in all, congratulations to the Iraqi people.

In November of 2004, only 62% of eligible Americans voted for president and they didn’t even have to worry about being shot or blown up. Even a 50% turnout by the Iraqis today makes the American turnout look shameful. Further, the turnout for the November American election was larger than it had been in a long time. Now, that’s even more shameful.

As Iraqis bask in the pride and success of their first election, the last thing one wants to do is to disparage George W. Bush. He may say that this election proves that he “brought democracy to Iraq.” However, that would be embellishing somewhat. One election does not a democracy make.

However, President Bush can rightly boast that, if Saddam Hussein was still the leader of Iraq, today’s successful election would never have taken place. He can further exalt that it was the “coalition of the willing”, lead by The United States military, that invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein.

This causes me to want to join those who don’t wish to disparage George W. Bush on this, a glorious day for the Iraqi people. So I won’t. I choose to broaden my target.

This morning on CNN, Senator Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, couldn’t say enough about the success of the Iraqi elections.

A couple of days prior to the Iraqi elections, Senator Ted Kennedy asked President Bush to set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Today, another Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden from Delaware, stated that he thought that Kennedy’s request was premature and should have at least waited until after today’s successful elections.

With January 30, 2005 going down in history as a glorious day for the people of Iraq, why should I, or anyone for that matter, wish to speak negatively about Senators Bayh or Biden or President Bush?

Let’s conduct a review, shall we?

The last time that any soldier died to give the majority of Americans the right to vote in a democratically conducted election was in the eighteenth century.

Yes, there has been suffering by women and African Americans since that time as they’ve pursued the right to vote. There may have even been killing involved. However, no one went to war to ensure that women and African Americans could vote.

Some may say that Americans died in World War II defending our liberty, but our liberty was not directly threatened when we entered that war. Brave soldiers died during World War II defending Europe, but they did not die to give Americans the right to vote. For sure, they didn’t die to give African Americans the right to vote because they were still banned from voting in many parts of our country at the end of World War II.

Iraq tells us a different story. Over 1,400 Americans have died within the past two years and, consequently, the Iraqi people were allowed to vote today. They weren’t even voting for the leadership of their country. They were voting for an assembly of people that will now work on a constitution that will decide how Iraq’s leadership will be chosen.

In Ohio in 2004 and in Florida in 2000, there were Americans who weren’t allowed to vote for bogus reasons. Some were reformed felons. Some used computerized machinery that may have been set up to deliver votes to candidates other than those that they thought they were voting for. The latter have no printed proof that the machines didn’t, indeed, discard their vote and give it to the other candidate. We have, however, heard a computer programmer swear under oath before Congress that he was asked to prepare paperless voting machines so that they would deliver votes to certain candidates in spite of who the voter actually voted for.

Not one American soldier died to ensure these, their fellow Americans, had the right to vote. Not one.

I can’t emphasize that I’m convinced that, when democracy begins to grow in a nation once ruled by tyranny, it is better by untold dimensions, not only for the nation itself, but for the world. Dealing with democratically elected governments who don’t torture and abuse its citizenry is levels easier than dealing with tyrants.

Iraq took the first step towards that today. As I mentioned, because of our invasion, that was able to happen.

We invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled the Hussein government in order to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Not once before the invasion did President George W. Bush ask congress or the American people for permission to invade Iraq to topple Hussein and give the Iraqis the opportunity to vote for the first time in their history.

Bush, as well as Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Cheney and other members of the Bush administration saw Iraq as possessors of “stockpiles” of weapons of mass destruction and saw that nation, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, as a “gathering”, “imminent” threat to the security of The United States of America. It further saw the Hussein government as a government who not only possessed “stockpiles” of weapons of mass destruction, but was unwilling to give them up.

That is why over 130,000 military personnel were sent to Iraq and that is why over 1,400 have been killed and thousands more have been permanently scarred.

Of course, we’ve since learned that Iraq never had any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and was not an “imminent” or even “gathering” threat to The United States.

I’ve heard absurd stories about how Hussein had his weapons sent to Syria or buried them. I find those stories absurd because I don’t even think he would rid himself of “stockpiles” of weapons of mass destruction knowing that his country was about to be invaded. There are people who believe that he had them, got rid of them and hid himself in what they call a “spider hole”, only to be captured and humiliated by the “coalition of the willing”. It makes no sense to me what so ever.

However, I saw and heard President Bush say that today’s election made the deaths of those over 1,400 Americans “worth it”. The reason over 130,000 military personnel were sent to Iraq and the reason that over 1,400 have died does not exist, yet a by product of our invasion, one that would never have been approved by either congress or the American people, have rendered those deaths “worth it”!

So that no mistake was admitted, the administration, led by Dick Cheney, one of the most perverse human beings to ever walk on the surface of the earth, began trying to convince the American people that Hussein’s secular government worked in concert with its arch rivals, Al Q’aida, to attack The United States on September 11, 2001.

This has also been disproved, although Cheney still scrapes it up now and again.

There were no Iraqis known to be on any of the 9/11 flights and no meeting ever took place in Prague between a member of Iraq’s government and an Al Q’aida operative.

Given those facts, if one can think of any reason to attack anyone in response to that tragedy, one with any logic would think of attacking Saudi Arabia as 17 of the 19 “terrorists” on the 9/11 flights were Saudis. 130,000+ military personnel, over 1,400 of whom have died within the past two years, were sent to Iraq. Not one soldier was sent to invade Saudi Arabia.

These military personnel were sent to Iraq and have died in Iraq. As there have been no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, they could not have been sent there and they could not have died there for the given reason.

There was no secondary or tertiary reason given in the “run up” to the invasion for soldiers to invade Iraq and take their last breath there. Yet, Cheney and the Bush administration had to turn to one, an almost impossible Iraqi-Al Q’aida connection. Even though Cheney continues to try to pawn that story off as fact, it was never given as a reason for the invasion in the first place. The story is false and it wasn’t the reason for American military action and the deaths of over 1,400 military personnel.

However, according to President George W. Bush, today’s glorious step toward democracy by the Iraqi people have made those deaths “worth it”.

China is run by a tyrannical government. They haven’t been allowed to vote for anyone who is not a member of The Communist Party since before 1948. We saw what the government will do to anyone who dares to question it in Tiananmen Square in 1988.

How many people are suffering under the present Chinese regime? 1.3 billion people live under the present, tyrannical Chinese regime.

China, we know has weapons of mass destruction and they have delivery systems.

Why, in the final analysis, after all of the reasons given for invading Iraq have been proven false, can anyone say that the deaths of over 1,400 Americans is worth giving a country of 29 million people the right to vote when there are almost four times as many people in another nation who meet all the same criteria? Why didn’t we send troops to China to topple that regime and give those people a chance to vote? How could freeing 29 million people from torture and tyranny be better than freeing 1.3 billion? If overthrowing tyranny and delivering democracy to the rest of the world is our destiny, if it’s what makes the deaths of Americans “worth it”, then why start with such a small nation which was no threat to us?

I hope that, among the euphoric reaction to Iraq’s accomplishment, there still lives some logic. I hope that others, like me, have a significant dose of fear mixed with the happiness for the Iraqi people.

It seems that it didn’t take much other than homophobia and pseudo Christianity which accepts the killing of anyone except a fetus to put George W. Bush back into The White House.

When he was reelected by a slim margin, he claimed to have a mandate from the American people.

What is my fear? My fear is that, like Senators Bahy and Biden, more people will begin to support Bush, his cabal and his actions, none of which are honorable.

I fear that he will take away Social Security and put it into the hands of people the likes of whom run HMOs and Enron. You think it’ll go bust by 2042? Give these greed heads a shot at getting their grubby hands on it and it’ll never see 2042.

But Iraqis voted today and Bush is a hero.

He wants to continue to “bring democracy” to the rest of the world, starting, of course, with the oil rich Middle East. He is going to bring it to Iran next, then Syria. China and it 1.3 billion people, many of whom provide “slave labor” for American owned multinationals, one of Bush’s favorite food groups, will just have to wait its turn.

But Iraqis voted today and Bush is a hero.

He wants to drill in every inch of Alaska instead of seriously researching alternate sources of energy. He wants to drill for oil off the shores of California instead of seriously researching alternate sources of energy. And he wants to hand most of what is left as forest in the US over to his favorite food groups.

But Iraqis voted today and Bush is a hero.

He wants to tighten Christianity’s hold on America, writing it into the constitution where it absolutely does not belong. He’d love for this nation to be one nation, “under Christ”, a theocracy of sorts.

But Iraqis voted today and Bush is a hero.

Americans hate paying taxes. So many hard line Bush supporters don’t want single payer health insurance so that every American can have health insurance. They deplore the “welfare state” that FDR started. They don’t want to use their “hard earned” salary to help Americans. They want all of Americans to get off their asses and get themselves a job (remember, jobs are those things that are being sent to third world countries and countries with tyrannical governments – yes, like China).

But Iraqis voted today and Bush is a hero.

Americans hate paying taxes to support lazy Americans, but they don’t mind their tax money, billions upon billions and even more billions being requested, going to Iraq so that more Americans can die to disarm Iraq of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

But Iraqis voted today and Bush is a hero.

I’ve read so many letters to editors and other documents by Bush supporters which basically said, “You lost, now get over it and get with the program or get out!”

Now Bush supporters can look at the Iraqi vote, the turnout and say, “See, we told you he was right.”

But he wasn’t “right”. He hasn’t been “right” ever since he took office. He also hasn’t been truthful.

He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he wants to make sure everything he touches turns to gold.

So, today, a day that will go down in history as a glorious day for Iraqis, should also show that, on their way to the polls, Iraqis were bombed, beaten, their homes were broken into, their infrastructure was destroyed and, by some estimates, over 100,000 of them have been killed. All of this was done by a man who told us that we needed to invade Iraq to disarm it of its weapons of mass destruction.

But Iraqis voted today and Bush is a hero.

But his heroism was an accidental byproduct of his recklessness, recklessness that will now be supported more than ever. He may now have that mandate and he will have the power to grow his own power.

But Iraqis voted today, Bush is a hero and that scares the living shit out of me!

Using a lie to applaud a “success” is yet another disingenuous ploy used by this administration.

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » February 1st, 2005, 1:13 pm

Bush is a dangerous farsa a prueba de desmontaje, far away I think someone consider him a heroe, except some US citizens.
And China... I was talking last weekend with a friend that works for a US empresa that offers services in China with something like electric energy in ships, and for some reason China looks like a big negocio for US, negocio & fear (you know 1,...billion) maybe Bush is already wearing a pin of the chinese communist party in some hidden parts...

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Michael
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Post by Michael » February 2nd, 2005, 1:26 am

I've just written this to a good friend, but I'll write it here as well.

Unfortunately, too many people in our country have collective amnesia.

If Bush had asked to go to war to allow Iraqis to vote, he would not have gotten any support.

So he and his intelligence agencies (I hate using the word "intelligence" when it comes to Bush) made up a story they knew wasn't true. They knew Iraq had no WMD. The UN inspectors were on the ground just before the invasion. They were continuing to prove that Iraq's WMD had been destroyed.

Bush said that Hussein made the inspectors leave, but he didn't. Bush told them to leave because of the impending invasion.

Bush was going to attack Iraq even before September 11, 2001 ever happened. Somehow he convinced the American people that, since Muslims lived in Iraq, attacking Iraq in response to 9/11 was the right thing to do.

The American people knew that there were no Iraqis on those flights. They knew that there were 17 Saudis on the flights.

But the Saudis play nicely with us, so we would never attack them. It's the reason we haven't captured bin Laden. The Saudis don't want him captured and Bush is at their beckoned command.

US intelligence knows exactly where bin Laden is, I'm sure of it (I have no proof, but I'd bet on it). They won't capture him even though he's admitted to being behind 9/11. Hussein never admitted anything except that he had gotten rid of his WMD. He even presented the UN with documentation that makes "War And Peace" look like a pamphlet which proved that he had gotten rid of his WMD.

But Iraq didn't play nicely with us. We wanted to own their oil like we own the Saudi oil but, for some strange reason, Hussein wanted to retain ownership of the resources that were on his own land. I guess he was funny that way.

Arcadia, this should be obvious to the most casual of observers, but Bush drives a pick-up truck, can't speak the language, any of them, and chops wood. He's a down to earth millionaire, so the average American likes him.

He's now working on his fairytale which will precede his attack upon Iran.

Like he said himself, "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice and, um, uh, er, I won't get fooled again."

Such is not the case with the American people though.

It seems Bush can fool most of the people all of the time.

After all, are they gonna believe him or they're lyin' eyes?

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » February 2nd, 2005, 10:40 am

"Bush drives a pick-up truck, can´t speak the language -any of them- and chops wood"..., yeah, damn publicity language.

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Post by Lightning Rod » February 2nd, 2005, 3:08 pm

I love your stuff, Michael

It makes me sound like a moderate
"These words don't make me a poet, these Eyes make me a poet."

The Poet's Eye

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