Polls Close for Landmark Legislative Elections in Afghanistan, Amid Scattered Taliban Attacks

COX.Net AP Story ^ | Sep 18, 2005 | AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer

[SandRat]

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques.

--- snip ----

With nearly three-quarters of the populace illiterate, voting was slow as people spent as much as 10 minutes wading through ballots up to seven pages long to find pictures of candidates or symbols that represent them. Each voter dipped a finger in indelible purple ink to prevent repeat voting.

[new yorker 77]

There are not enough dead Afghanis or dead Americans to report on this in earnest in the MSM.

[ncountylee]

"French commando whose vehicle struck a mine."

Prayers to the family but has France cut and run yet?

[rineaux]

Each voter dipped a finger in indelible purple ink to prevent repeat voting.


if they did this in America, half the people in office would not be in office.

but it still does not address the dead voters.

[vbmoneyspender]

Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques.

What happened - did someone slip the AP editor a mickey finn last night.

[shezza]

A woman casts her vote in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2005. Afghanistan held landmark parliamentary elections on Sunday, the first in three decades. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

[SandRat]

Not from Afghanistan.

[kromike]

Ah, but here in America, if we attempted to adopt a similar approach, here's what you'd get:

1) Lawsuits by NAACP, LaRaza, ad nauseam about how finger-dipping "intimidates" minorities from voting.

2) Protest rallies by idiotic citizens with deformed or missing hands that finger-dipping offends them.

3) Liberal talking-head pundits theorizing that use of purple reminds them of the movie "The Color Purple" and therefore "proves" that all Republicans are racist for attempting to brand black people as slaves.

4) Strategists from the Algore and EffinKerry campaigns would promise free smokes to homeless people who would vote, chop off their dipped finger, then vote again (Note: John Kerry would protest the War On Terror by throwing someone else's fingers over the White House fence).

5) Michael Moore would mark his middle finger so that he could be filmed making a "political statement".

6) Homosexual activists would demand to use pink instead to remind everyone for the jillionth time about just how proud they are to be sexual deviants.

7) Just when you thought it was safe to turn on the children's TV network, we'd go quickly insane with PSA's delivered by Barney.

8) Bill Clinton would want to dip something else in purple ink (ewwwwww).

9) Kofi Annan would make another empty-headed speech about how a sea of purple fingers proves once and for all that George Bush personally is causing global warming.

10) After an election, the Tired Old Media would focus on ONE person with a privileged aggrieved-victim status and no purple finger and claim Republicans used german shepherds & marked police cars to suppress the votes of "millions of likely voters."

And on and on and on...

[rineaux]

some good/great points. 7 made me laugh, poor cigars.

Your #1 says it all-

"intimidates" minorities from voting.

Now if Jesse's guy won, you would not hear a peep from him. It is only when his dems lose that he calls for racisim.

[Dog]

France is in Afghanistan full tilt...they are in the hunt with us for Bin Laden....their Special Forces guys are excellent.