Posted on 01/30/2005 9:30:44 AM PST by Marguerite
Quotes from voters and observers on the Iraqi National Assembly elections :
"This is democracy," said Fathiya Mohammed, an elderly woman who voted in the small town of Askan south of Baghdad. "This is the first day I feel freedom."
"I came here to vote for our goal, which is freedom, and this is the first step toward democracy," said Shiite voter Abu Ahmed, 55, in Baqouba.
"We are feeling happiness today to be able to participate in a day like this after all these years. Now I can choose representatives for the Kurdish people, and you know what the situation was like for the Kurds in the past. Today the Kurds are happy," said voter Anwar Nader in the northern city of Kirkuk.
"This is our real Eid (Islamic feast), it is even a greater day," said Laith Ahmed as he entered a school in the Shiite city of Karbala.
"So far so good when you consider it's the first time," said Majid Lazem Fartousi, one of 159 Democratic Iraqi Movement candidates, at Baghdad?s middle-class Karada district. "There will be some isolated attacks here and there, but they will not stop the voting."
"As you can see, we broke a barrier of fear," said electoral commission official Mijm Towirish.
"I'm here because my conscience dictates that I should participate," Hussein Abbas, 63, a father of eight.
"I don't have a job. I hope the new government will give me a job," said Rashi Ayash, 50, a former Iraqi army lieutenant colonel. "I voted for the rule of law."
"I can't read or write so I ticked the number" of the Kurdish ticket, said Fouad Fattah, 29, Kurdish policeman in Irbil. "I was afraid to make a mistake. I hope the Kurds get a great number of votes so that we can rule ourselves."
"I am for elections. The killings and destruction today are against the interest of the Iraqi people, especially on the day that the Iraqis are deciding their political future," said Sheikh Hussein al-Budeiri, 48, from Babil province, south of Baghdad.
"This is a chance for you as Iraqis to assure your and your children"s future," Gov. Hamad Hmoud Shagti, said in a radio address in the mostly Sunni province of Salaheddin.
"These elections should have been delayed until the situation in Iraq calmed down," said Bahraini lawyer Aisha Jaffer. "The Iraqi people have suffered so much and they are constantly being tested."
"The elections are being held under an American occupation with a never-ending, open appetite based on an imperial strategy that aims for hegemony over the region and the world, starting from Iraq," the Sharjah-based Al-Khaleej daily said in an editorial.
?The irony is the Arab regimes, who criticise the gaps in the (Iraqi) elections and demand they be honest and transparent leading to full democracy for all Iraqis, are themselves banning such elections for their own peoples,? said Lebanon?s Al-Anwar political analyst Rafik Khoury.
Arab, American pundits, they have it all wrong. The sovereign people have spoken : Demo-Kratia (power of the people)
American LIBERAL media hoping for chaos and bloodshed in IRAQ, instead of HOPE and DEMOCRACY, so they can blame Bush. Pathetic.
President Bush showed this weekend what a strong leader he is, ignoring the threats from the terrorists and insisting that the elections go ahead as planned anyhow. A President Kerry would no doubt have used these threats to postpone the elections and as a result, would have plunged Iraq into chaos, which of course he would have blamed on Bush.
Thank goodness we elected the right man last November.
An illiterate Iraqi takes care to, and responsibility for, correctly registering his vote. Compare and contrast to Democrats in Florida '02 (or 'Rats generally).
Uh, I meant Floriduh '00 of course.
"This is Overhyped" Says a Deflated John Kerry
The democrats in Florida only go to public school.
This explained that ;-)
ping
I haven't been over to DU to see what they're making of this good news. I imagine those who haven't dropped dead from strokes are on suicide watch about now.
"I was against it, prior being for. Now I'm against it again. Until tomorrow..." - Flip-Flop Kerry
What is DU?
BTTT
"They are actually upset because not as many people got killed as was feared and far more Iraqis turned out to vote than were expected."
Sedition is reflexive with these people. They invoke Jeffersonian ideals as window dressing, but do so with little understanding of how deeply they are betraying the ideals they espouse.
Kerry and the democrat naysayers are nothing but democracy-hating communists who insist on impossibly high standards that aren't even achieved in mature democratic states. Of course, the media goes right along with them in supporting dictatorship. They may be worse because they do it for money and will greefully exploit people dying.
In the northern Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah, a man carried 80-year-old Mohammed Karim Khader over his shoulders and trekked the last few steps to the polling station.
At a polling place in eastern Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman in a black ski mask tucked his assault rifle under one arm and held the hand of an elderly blind woman to guide her to the polls.
An Iraqi Army soldier is wrapped in an Iraqi flag as he secures a polling station in Baghdad
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