Posted on 02/13/2005 5:58:39 AM PST by pickemuphere
A single election held in the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops isn't quite proof to the contrary, either.
You misunderstand me if you think I want to see democracy in Iraq fail.
I'd just like to know what are plans are in case it does. A little caution can sometimes be a good thing.
One good thing about pessimists is that they like (at least sometimes) to be proven wrong. :)
The grand experiment begins. I am hopeful, yet reserved in my outlook. I don't trust Islamists at the end of the day and believe that while the law of the land may be a free democratic society, enforcement of that law will tell all. I would not be surprised to see a representative theocracy with Sistani as the puppetmaster.
Our task is to make sure they know we'll waste 'em completely the next time, so they'd better not screw with us, and to get serious about energy independence from Moo morons.
LOL remember what the same MSM said about all of us dumb folks that voted for Bush....
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Here is a list of the political alliances receiving the most votes in Iraq's Jan. 30 national elections and the number of seats they will receive in the 275-member National Assembly, provided the results released Sunday are certified.
The United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite alliance backed by Shiite Muslim clergy): 4,075,295 — about 48 percent — for 140 seats.
The Kurdistan Alliance (coalition of two main Kurdish factions): 2,175,551 — about 26 percent — for 75 seats.
The Iraqi List (headed by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi): 1,168,943 — about 14 percent — for 40 seats.
Iraqis (headed by interim Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer): 150,680 for five seats.
The Turkomen Iraqi Front (represents the countries ethnic Turks): 93,480 for three seats.
National Independent Elites and Cadres Party: 69,938 for three seats.
The Communist Party: 69,920 for two seats.
The Islamic Kurdish Society: 60,592 for two seats.
The Islamic Labor Movement in Iraq: 43,205 for two seats.
The National Democratic Alliance: 36,795 for one seat.
National Rafidain List (Assyrian Christians): 36,255 for one seat.
The Reconciliation and Liberation Entity: 30,796 for one seat.
Iraqi Islamic Party (main Sunni group headed by Mohsen Abdel-Hamid): 21,342
Assembly of Independent Democrats (headed by Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi): 12,728
National Democratic Party (headed by Naseer Kamel al-Chaderchi, Sunni lawyer and member of the former Iraqi Governing Council): 1,603
Total votes: 8,550,571
Invalid votes: 94,305
___
Source: Iraq's election commission.
13/02/2005 Associated Press - By Jason Keyser
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslims won nearly half the votes in the nation’s landmark Jan. 30 election, giving the long-oppressed group significant power but not enough to form a government on its own, according to results released Sunday.
The Shiites likely will have to form a coalition in the 275-member National Assembly with the other top vote-getters - the Kurds and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s list - to push through their agenda and select a president and prime minister. The president and two vice presidents must be elected by a two-thirds majority.
"This is a new birth for Iraq," Iraqi election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said as he announced results. Iraqi voters "became a legend in their confrontation with terrorists."
Elsewhere Sunday, insurgents attacked a U.S. convoy and a government building near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, leaving at least four people dead, hospital workers said. Two Iraqi National Guard troops were also killed while trying to defuse a roadside bomb.
Minority Sunni groups, which largely boycotted voting booths and form the core of the insurgency, rejected the election - raising the prospect of continued violence as Iraqis try to rebuild their country.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television, Mohammed Bashar of the anti-American Association of Muslim Scholars said the fact that there were no international or U.N. monitors in Iraq made him question the figures.
"Those who boycotted the elections are more than those who took part in it," he said. "Boycotting the election does not mean that the boycotter will renounce his rights."
The Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance ticket received 4,075,295 votes, or about 48 percent of the total cast, Iraqi election officials said. The Kurdistan Alliance, a coalition of two main Kurdish factions, was second with 2,175,551 votes, or 26 percent, and the Iraqi List headed by the U.S.-backed Allawi finished third with 1,168,943 votes, or about 14 percent.
Those three top finishers represent about 88 percent of the total, making them the main power brokers as the assembly chooses national leaders and writes a constitution.
Of Iraq’s 14 million eligible voters, 8,456,266 cast ballots for 111 candidate lists, the commission said. That represents a turnout of about 60 percent, several points higher than the predicted 57 percent.
In the ethnically mixed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Kurds took to the streets to celebrate the results. Cars sped through the streets blaring their horns and waving flags of Kurdistan.
Since Saddam Hussein’s ouster, Kurdish leaders have focused on influencing political decisions in Baghdad with the aim of reinforcing autonomy in their northern provinces.
"I’m a Kurd. I’m the mother of a martyr. I feel like he has come back to life. We have a chance now," said Shamsa Saleh, 57, carrying a Kurdish flag in her hand.
People crowded the street and police patrolled to keep the peace.
The figures also indicate that many Sunni Arabs stayed at home on election day, either out of fear of insurgent attacks or opposition to a vote with thousands of U.S. and foreign soldiers on Iraqi soil.
In Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni Muslim insurgency, only 17,893 votes were cast in the National Assembly race - a turnout of 2 percent.
In Ninevah province, which includes the third-largest city, Mosul, only 17 percent of the voters participated in the National Assembly race and 14 percent voted in the provincial council contests.
A ticket headed by the country’s president Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, won only about 150,000 votes - less than 2 percent. A list headed by Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi took only 12,000 votes - or 0.1 percent.
Pachachi told Al-Arabiya television it was clear that "a big number of Iraqis" did not participate in the election, and "there are some who are not correctly and adequately represented in the National Assembly" - meaning his fellow Sunni Arabs.
"However, the elections are correct and a first step and we should concentrate our attention to drafting the constitution which should be written by all Iraqi factions in preparation for wider elections."
Parties have three days to lodge complaints before the results are considered official and assembly seats are allocated, the election commission said.
"Until now there is no estimation regarding how many seats the political parties will get. When the counts are final the number of seats will be divided according to the number of votes," commission member Adel al-Lami said.
The balloting was the first free election in Iraq in more than 50 years and the first since Saddam was ousted from power after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Also Sunday, gunmen assassinated an Iraqi general and two companions in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. The attack occurred as Brig. Gen. Jadaan Farhan and his companions were traveling through Baghdad’s Kazimiyah district, an Iraqi police officer said on condition of anonymity.
A claim of responsibility for the attack in the name of al-Qaida quickly surfaced on a Web site that often posts statements by Islamic militants. The claim described the brigadier general as a senior commander in the Iraqi National Guard and the guard commander at Taji camp, an American facility about 15 miles north of Baghdad.
There was no way to verify the claim’s authenticity.
Meanwhile, U.S. hopes for a larger NATO role in Iraq suffered a setback when German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Sunday rejected calls for the alliance to protect U.N. operations there. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also ruled out a U.N. security role.
In the battle just north of Mosul, insurgents fired on the convoy in Al-Qahira district, leaving at least four people dead and two wounded, doctors at the Al-Jumhuri Teaching Hospital said.
Insurgents also fired a rocket at the governor’s building in Mosul, killing one woman and one man, as well as injuring four others, officials at the hospital said. Two Iraqi National Guard troops were killed on Mosul’s airport road while trying to diffuse a roadside bomb, police said.
NATO’s role in Iraq has been limited to a small training mission in Baghdad and logistics support to a Polish-led force serving with the U.S. coalition. Iraq war opponents led by France and Germany have prevented the alliance developing a wider role, and have refused to send their own troops, even on the training mission.
Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister, said his country would not veto a NATO decision to do more, if it was backed by the other 25 allies. But he insisted "we will not be sending soldiers to Iraq."
Fischer emphasized German efforts to help Iraq in other ways - through military and police training outside the country, economic aid and debt relief.
Voters chose the National Assembly and ruling councils in the country’s 18 provinces. Iraqis living in Kurdish-ruled areas of northern Iraq also elected a new regional parliament.
About 1.2 million Iraqis living abroad were eligible to vote in 14 nations. More than 265,000 of those Iraqis cast ballots in the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.
In the United States, where more than 24,000 Iraqis cast ballots, the alliance was strongest with more than 31 percent, while Allawi’s list came in sixth with about 4 percent - finishing not only behind the Kurds but also behind two tiny Assyrian Christian parties and a communist-led party.
Then explain the Islamic countries that are not tyrannical.
Exactly.
The Islamist clerics are being marginalized.
Evne if Sistani himself gets in as PM, there is simply no way the govt. would become Islamist in nature.
To all the naysayers, your Wrong !
that would be independence
"I hope the Kurds will get what they want."
Yes, that is indepence.... but Bush did empasize on a unified Iraq.
And the Kurds indepence is going to be attacked from many sides, first the rest of Iraq, then Turkey, then the other countries with kurdish population (Iran and Syrya).
Simple-minded rubbish, at best. Islam as practiced by whom? There are many different sects with differing philosophies.
There is nothing even remotely incompatible between democracy and the traditional form of Shia Islam practiced by al-Sistani and the vast majority of Iraqi Shiites.
I agree. I am not overly-optimistic, but it is only fair to give them a chance. It is weird, but the depth of factionalism in the ME is a cause for hope in this instance. :)
Under sharia, perhaps, but not under a caliphate. The Shi'ites regard the Caliphs as usurpers, and in fact should be natural allies against al Qaeda, since al Qaeda wants to establish a global Caliphate.
"What if it ends up as a constitutional theocracy? That would be interesting.
----
You mean like the UK, except with a written constitution? "
Ooo, ooo. Let me bite! I LOVE the idea we are a theocracy!
Except of course, it bears no resemblance to the reality of my every day life!
"Here's a list of some prominent scholars who believe that Islam, as it exists and is practiced currently, is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
1)Roger Scruton
2)Fr. James Schall
3)Robert Spencer
4)Bat Ye'or
You may not agree with them, but you have in no way discredited their arguments."
I can give you a short list of some of the most respected physicists and aeronautical engineers on the planet who will attest to the fact that due to the laws of aerodynamics a bumble bee simply cannot fly.
You may not agree with them, but you cannot discredit their arguments
I have that same feeling. I'd like to think that they had finally escaped the backwardness of their past, but history proves that when these types get power they use it to install the Shar'ia.
From a theological perspective, the Shi'ites are actually MORE prone to islamist theocracy than the Sunni's because the Shi'ite conceptualization of the Shar'ia includes a centralized Ayatollah figure, deemed to be the theological intercessor for the Imam Mahdi who is to complete the Shar'ia (read: an islamic cleric who thinks that he has the "right" to govern by religious decree given to him by allah). While Sunnis can be prone to theocracy as well, their religious structure is decentralized compared to the Shi'ites, who have a heirarchy under the Ayatollahs. Thus Sunnis get a bunch of localized competing mullahs who fight among themselves as much as they fight with everybody else (which is a virtually constant feature of islam). That's why many Sunni or Sunni-ruled countries are run by a quasi-secular dictator rather than a cleric.
Shi'ite theocracy is more dangerous because it is more prone to uniting under the Ayatollah heirarchy and making an Ayatollah (or upper council of them) the de facto head of state. That's where you risk getting a Khomeini who comes along and declares religious wars on everybody. The whole of the shi'ite country can theoretically fall under his jurisdiction and, as such, be drafted into battle for islam.
Iraqi elections were a great concept in all and I'm happy Saddam is gone, but a Shi'ite victory last week is NOT a good thing.
As I understand this process that has been set up for writing the new constitution of Iraq, there are several groups who have essentially been given veto power if they don't like the result. One of those groups is the Kurds. Whatever this initial "congress" writes is going to have to satisfy the whole range of Iraqi interests: this is not a majority, or even a supermajority, voting situation. Kind of reminiscent of our own early days, when the whole issue of whether the fledgingly US ought to allow slavery nearly made it impossible for the 13 states to come to an agreement, but in the end they did by just setting it aside for future discussion, and in the end, battle.
Not much about the details of the Iraq constitutional process appear to have made it out via the lamestream press, and I'm quite fuzzy about it myself - I suppose I ought to make an attempt to educate myself about it. But the fact is that the theocrats can not simply impose their stamp upon the Iraqi consititution, and that at least two groups, including the Kurds, essentially have a veto.
George W. Bush is Mr. Conservative - Whatever he says or does defines conservatve. If he appoints faggots as ambassadors it's a conservative postion. If you disagrre you're a dirty liberal palecon commie rat DUer. If he proposes massive social programs like the prescription drug boondoggle, then it's a conservative position. If you disagrre you're a dirty liberal palecon commie rat DUer. If wants to ban assault weapons, then it's a conservative position. If you disagrre you're a dirty liberal palecon commie rat DUer. If he tells you that God want people to be free, then it's a conservative position. It's also the Christian position (Never mind that it's still blasphemey) Etcetera ecetera.
That's how the GWB CULT works on the new FR.
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