Posted on 01/31/2005 11:55:16 AM PST by ex-Texan
IRAQ: Terrorists Fail to Interfere With Voting
January 31, 2005: On election day, there were about half a dozen terrorist attacks, killing 44 people and wounding over a hundred. Despite that, over eight million Iraqis went to vote. The atmosphere across the country was one of triumph, with people proudly displaying their ink stained fingers (so marked to prevent people from voting twice). In Tikrit, Saddam’s home town, former Baath Party officials, and relatives of Saddam, were seen voting. In only a handful of polling places were the terrorists successful in preventing people from voting. It will take 7-10 days for all the votes (for local officials and the national legislature) to be counted. Anecdotal evidence (there was no national exit polling) indicate that the secular parties did better than expected. Iraqi and coalition troops did a good job of shutting down terrorist attempts to interfere with the voting. There were many incidents of troops intercepting hostile gunmen, and defeating them in gun battles before polling places could be attacked.
About 500 Iraqis were killed by anti-government forces in January. Most of the dead were civilians. Over a thousand were wounded in the attacks, and thousands more received threats from Baath Party and al Qaeda terrorists. The terrorist threat seemed larger than it actually was because the media amplified the terrorist threats.
January 30, 2005: The voting is taking place. Out of a population of 27 million, some 14.2 million are eligible to vote. Throughout the country there are 5578 polling places. The system the Iraqis selected to determine who gets elected represents the diversity of political opinion in the Middle East. There are 223 political parties, which have organized themselves into 35 coalitions. There are also independent candidates is 48 candidates. There are three elections going on, with 17,000 candidates including 7,761 for the Transitional National Assembly. There are 275 seats in the National Assembly. There was some ant-government violence, but not as much as was threatened. There are long lines at most polling places. Even in areas thick with anti-government forces, people are coming out to vote. The anti-government forces have declared democracy, “un-Islamic,” but few Iraqis are going along with that.
January 28, 2005: For the last month, the population of Fallujah has been allowed back into their city. The government has a division (eight battalions) of troops and police in Fallujah, along with a regiment of American marines. Nearly 200,000 civilians are back in Fallujah. Anti-government fighters have been almost completely removed from the town. The marines went house to house, looking for hostile fighters, and stockpiles of weapons, three times. Some 500 weapons caches were found and removed. For over two months, there have been no mortar or rocket attacks on American camps around Fallujah, earlier there were 3-5 a week. Fallujah is in eastern Iraq's Anbar province, and that area is still violent, with many of the anti-government gangs moving to Samara and Mosul.
There are still, by some counts, 70-80 anti-government attacks a day throughout Iraq. Most are in Anbar province, and most are concentrated in a few areas (Samara, Mosul and parts of Baghdad.) Most of these attacks are minor (a few shots, or an RPG, fired), and result in no casualties. The only ones that make the news are usually car bombs and incidents where American troops are killed. Another area where the reporting is spotty is when terrorist leaders, or key technicians, are captured. Several car bomb builders have been captured in the past month, but the announcement of the capture was often delayed. This indicates that the military and police forces involved are trying to use information of the captures to play some mind games with the terrorists still out there. For the usual reasons, not much information is released about the new Iraqi intelligence forces. But these people have been in action, and have accounted for an improvement in the quality of recent arrests made by American troops and Iraqi police. The anti-government and terrorist gangs are under increasingly more effective attack. This is a war you don't see, as both sides have good reason to keep their operations secret. One not-so-secret part of the war is the role of the Sunni Arab media. The newspapers, radio and television broadcasts are still very pro-terrorist, although these killers are rarely called that. The Sunni Arab media describes them as "insurgents" and "resistance fighters." The European media likes to pick up on this as well, which helps recruiting terrorists among the millions of Sunni Moslems living in Europe.
In the past year, American troops have killed or captured some 15,000 hostile Iraqis (nearly all Sunni Arab) and foreign fighters. A network of recruiters, stretching into nearby Arab countries and Sunni Arab communities in Europe, has been uncovered. This has led to arrests of recruiters and terrorists in those areas. Most Iraqis (the Shia Arab and Kurds) see the violence in Iraq
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Wait a minute!
Didn't the MSM report that there were '38 terrorist attacks with 44 deaths?
I guess in the MSM's mind 'half a dozen' equals 38!
The swamp is draining and the vote is a resounding mandate against the terrorists that will increase the pressure on the non-Al Queda Sunni groups to join the government. This will firther fracture the "insurgent" movement much to the dismay of Ted Kennedy.
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