NationStates Jolt Archive

So Iraq has voted, what do you think?


Will the Iraqis see it as real?


Will there be more violence, less violence?

Probably the same amount of violence, but now more assassination attempts.

:sniper:

I think the Iraqi elections is a farse. As long the States is in Iraq, just about all Iraqi people will still feel they are not free. In my opinion, this whole Iraqi war, and everything after, has been an complete and utter disaster. Poor planning, poor leadership, poor equipment leads to thousands death for both sides.

NRJ

:headbang: :mp5: :gundge: :mad: :confused:

Will the Iraqis see it as real?

Will the 2/3 or more of Iraqis who votes see that they had in fact really voted?

Call me an optimist, but I say yes.

Of course, the next question is : what exactly did they vote for?

Did they vote based on an intimate knowledge of the 100+ parties and their resective platforms?

Did they vote in great part because they feel this might hasten the departure of the army of occupation?

Who won?

Will the winning party be of a mindset to write a Constitution acceptable to the US who has made it pretty clear that there is a level of expectation on what it contains? And if so, will they really be creating a basis for sound government that will succeed?

Has the reporting on it been honest? i.e. was that real spontaneous dancing in the streets or another staged event like the pulling down of the statue of Saddam? Who knows, but it sure looked good on TV right?

I HOPE for the future of IRaq. I hope that this step develops into a proper self rule.

But I also get very annoyed at the way the press was spouting out propoganda as "fact" yesterday without properly qualifying it or verifying it in much the same way as they did parrot the assertions about WMD and al qaeda ties before the war without asking for proof.

Case in point: how many people here heard and repeated the 72% participation claim that was being shouted out by the press yesterday. Never minding the fact that the elections ministry itself said it had no count of voters yet, and the spokesperson who made that claim could offer no figure for total votes cast to support his claim.

Still, all day yesterday you heard "72%" repeated over and over. Wouldn;t the obvious question to ask the guy who gave that number "so, how many people voted?" After all, he would have to have known that to give his figure.

Was it 72%? Who knows. I would like to hope so, but the news servies regurgitating guesses as facts is a disservice to the public.


It's continued BS like that and like like this article that annoy the hell out of me: (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050131/wl_mideast_afp/iraqvoteforeigniom&cid=1514&ncid=1480)

It starts off with a big bold title:

Nearly 94 percent of registered expats voted in Iraq election: IOM

Wow! Impressive! Iraqi expatriots really cared!

you read the first few paragraphs to get the details and you get:

Nearly 94 percent of Iraqi expatriates registered to vote outside Iraq (news - web sites) took part in elections for the country's new transitional assembly, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

Some 265,148 Iraqis living abroad, representing 93.6 percent of registered voters in 14 countries, cast their ballots in the election for Iraq's Transitional National Assembly Election over the past three days, the IOM said in a statement.

The Geneva-based IOM was appointed by Iraq's electoral commission to organise out-of-country voting.

Counting of the votes cast abroad was underway in many of the countries and the final results would be sent to Iraq's national electoral commission in Baghdad by February 5, the agency said.


The IOM said it was up to the commission to announce the certified result.


Way to go ex-pats!!!!

Then the one qualifying line in the middle:

The turnout of voters abroad is equivalent to about one quarter of the one million Iraqis living abroad and estimated by the IOM to be eligible

What the hell? how is 25% something to trumpet as a huge turnout? Hell - they only registered last week so the fact that those who went to the effort to register acually voted is hardly suprising is it? FAct is that the turnout for ex-patriots was dismal!

But then the report ends on that up-beat feeling again:

We are delighted that the three days of polling went smoothly and that so many expatriate Iraqis took this historic opportunity to vote," said Peter Erben, Director of IOM's Iraqi voting programme.


"I have worked on many post-conflict out-of-country elections but this is honestly the first time I have seen this level of emotion and excitement among voters."


"We have had people turning up to the polls in traditional dress, people dancing in the street afterwards, and many, many people proudly holding up their inked finger as a sign of their freedom to choose their future leaders," Erben added.



Yep, the 25% of ex-patriots who cared enough to vote were passionate about it. I'm happy for them but still this seems a way to spin a good news story out of the fact that 3/4's of the exile population didn't give enough of a rats ass to bother voting.


That is piss-poor journalism bordering on blatant propoganda in my books. And we all remember the teeth gnashing from the press last year as they self-flagellated on why they hadn't questioned the claims about Iraq enough before the war. And after that little self-pity-party it's right back to lax standards as usual.


Ah well - must be that "liberal" media I keep hearing so much about....

I think that the Iraqi elections are good for Iraq, and it was good not to delay them as many people "liberals" seemed to think.

It turns out the elections went fairly well conisdering that most "liberals" tended to say that all hell was going to break loose.

So Iraq has voted, what do you think?
I think the liberals are disappointed that the elections went so well.