Posted on 01/31/2005 1:40:33 AM PST by kattracks
Bombs, a boycott and threats of a bloodbath didn't scare Iraqis away from their first free elections in half a century, which ended yesterday with an impressively large turnout and surprisingly few casualties.Joyful voters dressed in their best clothes, danced in the streets and proudly showed off ink-stained fingers that proved they had cast their ballots.
The elderly and wounded hobbled to polling sites on crutches and stood in long lines for the vote, which President Bush proclaimed a "resounding success."
"I would have crawled here if I had to," Samir Hassan, 32, who lost his leg to a car bomb last year, said as he waited on line to vote in Baghdad. "Today I am voting for peace."
An estimated 8 million Iraqis - or about 60% of the voting population - showed up to elect a National Assembly, which will choose a government and draft a constitution over the next year.
From Baghdad to Washington, euphoric officials declared the balloting a success, despite low numbers of Sunni Arabs atpolling sites and a wave of suicide bombings and mortar attacks that killed at least 44 people. One U.S. Marine was killed in combat in Anbar province, but officials provided no details.
"The terrorists threw everything they had into this fray, and they lost," said Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and the likely winner of an assembly seat.
"The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East," Bush said from the White House, which is sure to seize on the election results as validation of U.S. strategy in Iraq.
Before the polls opened at 7a.m. Baghdad time, tension was thick across Iraq, due in part to a spate of preelection violence aimed at intimidating potential voters.
Although the country was in lockdown, with borders sealed and private cars barred from the streets, insurgents managed to carry out more than a dozen audacious assaults.
Militants with explosives strapped to their bodies blew themselves up at polling sites in Baghdad and inside a minibus carrying voters. Mortars rocked half a dozen cities.
The Iraqi wing of Al Qaeda, led by notorious terror thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility, boasting that "lions from the martyrs' brigade ... inflicted wounds on the enemy."
But Shiites and Kurds, at least, were defiant. There was even a report of a crowd overtaking an ambulance that had been hijacked by grenade-tossing militants.
"Iraqis are walking over body parts of a bomber to vote," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who visited some of the polling sites. "Voting was slower in the beginning, but when people started to come back alive, others went out."
For Sunni Muslim strongholds, the picture was starkly different. As expected, many polling places were deserted as voters heeded a boycott call.
In Samarra, a city of 200,000 that is rife with insurgents, fewer than 1,400 people cast ballots. "Nobody came. People were too afraid," said Madafar Zeki, who ran one site.
Shiite Muslims, oppressed by the Sunni minority during former dictator Saddam Hussein's 35-year reign, were always expected to win the election.
But since no one party is likely to achieve an overwhelming majority of the seats, the door is open for Sunni leaders to influence the selection of the prime minister and cabinet and the new constitution.
Final tallies should be done in 10 days. The assembly seats will be distributed to the parties in proportion with the vote, and the top candidates on each ticket will join the infant legislature. A permanent government is supposed to be in place by December.
With News Wire Services
Originally published on January 31, 2005
Doesn't look like anyone else was hurt by this bomber. Thank God for that.
What a glorious day!
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