there's a difference between VISION and DELUSION.

White House ruled the "Election" in Iraq (4.00 / 3)
How absolutely stupid can people be, to think that there were "free and fair" elections in Iraq?

Voter registration was the hardest part of that operation, as you can see here:



First of all, the Coalition Provisional Authority had passed a number of laws that totally placed Iraq, as a polity, in the hands of the Coalition and the White House. The Iraqis are not sovereign, nor do they exercise any real power inside their territory. What happens, happens because the White House wants it to happen. (Which is why the rising resistance movement is gaining ground. When you disenfranchise a people, through an illegal occupation, shit stuff happens).

The U.S. applied overt and covert influence on the election, seeking to sponsor and aid favorites, while making it harder for opposition voices to be heard. There are many ways of providing assistance, for instance by allowing your favorites to operate under the protective umbrella you otherwise reserve for your own, inside the Green Zone. That protection can also be extended, when required, outside Fort Apache, while it can also be withdrawn from those not toeing the line.

The Iraqi elections were a sham - the conclusion was foretold. The Shi'ites would have run away with it, if it had truly been free - but then they would have lost the protective umbrella supplied them by the U.S.

Thus the Shi'ites were smart enough to recognize that they now had a shot at some real power, and of possibly creating a Shi'ite southern stronghold, in line with what the Kurds managed in the north, under Garner, before the war. They went along with getting a result just short of a majority - good enough to make them feel powerful, and sufficietly "small" to not make Bush and Cheney look like idiots for handing Iraq to Iran.

The fact that it took forever to resolve the distribution of actual power, after the election, clearly reflects how rigged the entire affair was.

Or how about the post-rigging of the result? The fact that the U.S. suddenly realized that the Shi'ites could run off with the south, and possibly the country, anyway? Which led the White House to suddenly "demand" that the Sunnis should get representation, and the Coalition to begin negotiating with the resistance.

I'd say that's pretty much rigging the election, post-factum, isn't it?

What if an entire group chose to not participate in a national election, as a protest, in a European democracy? Then, once the election was over, the E.U. enters into the picture, and demands that the group that voluntarily disenfranchised itself should get a significant portion of the seats in parliament, in spite of not having participated? Uproar would ensue.

So - please, lets stop the pretense. The White House manipulated the world, in order to get its war. Once inside Iraq, do you think it would stop short of rigging what required rigging, in order to try and get what it came for?

Fortunately, there's a difference between VISION and DELUSION.

Vision is tested by time, and grows in legitimacy as its predictions are borne out.

Delusions, likewise, are also tested by time, and are revealed for what they are. In the case of the White House on Iraq, the stark, raving, mad ramblings of people who think they can create reality.

Now, that's a delusion of the first order. And the Cheney administration is fast approaching its last throes, because of that delusion.

That's why the GOP is panicking, and the White House is battening hatches now. This is much, much bigger than the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson - the proper name for this scandal is Iraqgate.

"I don't do quagmires, and my boss doesn't do nuance."

by SteinL on Mon Jul 18th, 2005 at 03:15:06 CDT

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