NationStates Jolt Archive

Armitage: All Iraqis must be able to vote

The No. 2 official at the State Department said Friday that the elections planned for January in Iraq must be "open to all citizens," contradicting Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who has suggested that voting might not be possible in the more-violent areas.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/24/armitage.iraq.ap/index.html


http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/24/rumsfeld.iraq.elections.reut/index.html

Do I smell a raising of the alert level again? Today is the 24th. My guess is that there will be a terror alert on or by the 27th.

Silly Bushites!

When will they get their facts straight?

Also note that Rumsfeld said he wants to increase the size of the force, yet he still denies that a draft is required for it. Note the mention of Emergency Authorities - I think these will show up more in the near future.

mmm sounds like to me is that they want the entire country to vote but dont want to put a potential target for a bomb. if some terrorist went in there with a bomb and blew himself up it would take the people around him and he could also destroy the ballot boxes so therefore making it completely pointless for anyone to show up in the first place, and more than likely the people who organized the area ballot boxes would be dead too so they couldnt be counted as well. pardon my grammer to any of you picky people.

mmm sounds like to me is that they want the entire country to vote but dont want to put a potential target for a bomb. if some terrorist went in there with a bomb and blew himself up and a lot of people around him, he could also destroy the ballot boxes so therefore making it completely pointless for anyone to show up in the first place, and more than likely the people who organized the area ballot boxes would be dead too so they couldnt be counted.
I don't understand their logic of "We'll have to disrupt the democratic process because terrorists want to disrupt the democratic process" It's like making their job all that easier.

mmm sounds like to me is that they want the entire country to vote but dont want to put a potential target for a bomb. if some terrorist went in there with a bomb and blew himself up and a lot of people around him, he could also destroy the ballot boxes so therefore making it completely pointless for anyone to show up in the first place, and more than likely the people who organized the area ballot boxes would be dead too so they couldnt be counted.

Uh, that still doesn't explain why two administration officials directly contradicted each other.

What are they going to do, have the polling booths in a secure, undisclosed location?

Uh, that still doesn't explain why two administration officials directly contradicted each other.

What are they going to do, have the polling booths in a secure, undisclosed location?
duh! if no one knows where they are no one can blow them up, then agian no one can vote... maybe they will go around finding everyone who is going to vote for bush, blindfold them, and ship them to the polling locations

"Believe me, if we need more in strength, we will request more in strength. We will either do it under the emergency authorities to start with or we'll come before the congress."

At least that is what I understood from Rummy's reports yesterday in front of the US Senate.

Brrrrrrrr, it's chilly in here. Does anyone else feel a draft?

Brrrrrrrr, it's chilly in here. Does anyone else feel a draft?
*puts a sweater on like George Bush did to dodge the draft*

Not just a draft, but also the existence of emergency authorities granting Rumsfeld extraordinary powers, which we already had here in Germany... in 1933 when the Nazis took power. Somehow all of this reminds me of our own history.

Well, the Republicans are on the defensive now.

A quote from the votenowar.org email I just got:

Ayad Allawi was a CIA agent in the 1990's and was hand-picked by the Bush Administration to be the new Prime Minister in Iraq last June. His government is considered by the people in Iraq to be a puppet regime controlled by the Bush Administration. Throughout Iraq, the resistance forces have gotten the upper hand in spite of the Bush-Allawi strategy of carrying out massive aerial bombing campaign in Fallujah, Ramadi, Tal Afar, Samarrah, and other cities including sections of Baghdad. The iron fist policy has led to huge surge in Iraqi casualties. The best estimates are upwards of 40,000 Iraqis have been killed. But this policy, while successful at spilling rivers of blood, has led only to a stiffening resistance that commands support from an ever-larger part of the Iraqi people. In August, the number of monthly attacks on U.S. and other occupation forces increased to 2,700 up from 700 in April. More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers were wounded in August alone -- many of these injuries are permanent life-changing wounds.

Allawi's speech to Congress yesterday was not meant to convince the Iraqi people that things are getting better. His government, in fact, has no legitimacy and Allawi is considered a thug and a collaborator by the Iraqis. His carefully scripted visit and speech were aimed only at convincing the people of the United States that George Bush is succeeding in Iraq. His speech was really dictated by the Bush re-election team. His message to angry or worried people in the United States was "don't believe your own eyes." That the daily images from Iraq -- of car bombings, aerial attacks, improvised explosive devices, of hospitals filled to the limit with the dead and wounded, -- that these images are not really real. He asked us to believe that the pictures from Iraq are just made-for-TV fiction. Allawi's speech before both Houses of Congress was pure politics, and election-year politics at its worst.

Actually, Rumsfeld is also setting the table to cut and run and leave Iraq in a mess:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=574&e=6&u=/nm/20040924/wl_nm/iraq_usa_rumsfeld_dc_11

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States does not have to wait until Iraq (news - web sites) "is peaceful and perfect" before it begins to withdraw military troops from that troubled country, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday.

Responding to questions from reporters, Rumsfeld said Washington was determined to provide security for scheduled January elections in Iraq, where nearly 140,000 American troops are now fighting a growing insurgency.


But "any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and U.S. forces, I think, would obviously be unwise," he told a press conference after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.


So much for rebuilding Iraq into a peaceful democracy to help stablilize the Middle East...

So what? Two people in have two different opinions. That's hardly unusual. I say stop talking about what they say is going to happen, and concentrate on what actually does happen.
It'd be entirely possible to bump up the number of troops in Iraq without a draft. The Army is still meeting recruitment numbers. And we've got 100,000 troops in western Europe who Bush wants to bring home or move somewhere else. There will not be a draft.
And what happens if we train 10,000 Iraqi troops to be as effective as a similar number of American troops? We could send those Iraqis out in the field, and bring home 10,000 Americans even if the place isn't "peaceful and perfect".