Reporter's Notebook: Sobering Thoughts After the Election in Iraq

FOXNews.com ^ | 20 December 2005 | Dana Lewis

[Aussie Dasher]

BAGHDAD, Iraq — FNC's Dana Lewis It was all positive on election day in Iraq. After all how should we, could we, report it any differently.

Violence? All those threats from Al Qaeda to blow up everything and everyone? There were only 14 minor attacks on polling stations. Mostly drive by shootings that didn’t result in voting disruptions. A bomb in Mosul killed one man. A rocket in the Green Zone, which rattled the ground where I stood doing a live report for FOX News at 7 a.m. as the polls opened, injured three people. But over all? Peaceful.

And the election commission reported voting was so strong the polls were kept open for an extra hour to accommodate long lines. Even the Sunnis voted in remarkable numbers considering they boycotted the election in January.

But a few interesting things:

As I walked across the lawn to the convention center in Baghdad Friday morning, an Iraqi Sunni friend of mine, also a journalist, told me “did you hear that many polling places in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad were empty yesterday. People are fed up and chose not to vote.”

Late at night former Prime Minister, and secular Shiite candidate, Iyad Allawi was on Iraqi TV complaining vigorously of voter fraud and threatening to tell every diplomat in every embassy the vote was crooked.

[Aussie Dasher]

Can't beat an eyewitness account...

[msnimje]

“did you hear that many polling places in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad were empty yesterday. People are fed up and chose not to vote.”

This is hearsay at best and a "loser's limp" at best.

I refuse to be pessimistic about the future of Iraq. I refuse to believe the Iraqi people are too stupid to form a thriving democracy. I refuse to believe that almost 40 years of torture and misery have not lit the fire of freedom in the belly of most Iraqis.

[bnelson44]

Well they got 70% turn out, so someone voted ;)

[r9etb]

a "loser's limp" at best

LOL! Nice turn of phrase.

[Howlin]

Accentuate the negative.

[hsalaw]

"Iyad Allawi was on Iraqi TV complaining vigorously of voter fraud and threatening to tell every diplomat in every embassy the vote was crooked."

Sounds like John F'n Kerry in Ohio. Iraq IS becoming a democracy!

[Shermy]

"Can't beat an eyewitness account..."

Not impressed.

[Marine_Uncle]

It sure is going to be interesting to see just how many Iraqi at this point are going to see that their hope is in sharing power for the good of all. Regardless of what list yields the next PM and President, one thing is for sure, or at seems apparent to me. There are going to be a number of leaders from all the parties saying they must work together. They are not anywhere as stupid as a lot of folks purtend them to be. They know the stakes are critically high. The rather poor performance of the majority role this past year has made many of them weary of just voting for a majority Shia leader. I am not convinced this early in the vote count that Allawi is still out of the race.
And people like him that will be around regardless of the outcome are going to be influencial in perhaps keeping things at an even strain. That is at least my hope. Time will tell us soon enough. Give it three weeks.

[wildcatf4f3]

its win/win either way--a new demo ally or the whole mid east goes up in flames. either way is fine by me. PS i wouldn't count on a rational outcome with all the radical islamics, both overt and covert. Iran would love to defeat Bush by proxy just as they taunt israel via islamic jihad. If the screw they pooch, we let them bleed each other and come in when they're weak.

[InvisibleChurch]

i think even a lot of islamofascists are going to get used to peace and not seeing things get blown up all the time ... hate takes a lot of energy and once you turn that tap off, it is hard to get excited at the prospect of blowing yourself up if you see that it won't do any good

[calex59]

“did you hear that many polling places in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad were empty yesterday. People are fed up and chose not to vote.”

This is the same crap they said in the last election. Exactly the same statement. I wish I could find the article and post it but I can't but I know this is what the lame stream media said about the last Iraqi election. Back then of course it was the Sunnis who wouldn't vote so of course the whole think would collapse. Now, some UNNAMED(again) informant, overheard in the street no less, says some people didn't vote! Well, since they had ONLY 70 percent turnout that leaves 30 percent who didn't vote, a blowout in anyone's language. How a journalists can say there was a 70 percent turnout and they had to keep the polls open an extra hour and in the next breath try to paint the elections as a failure is beyond me.

How anyone with an IQ over 2 could believe them is even more strange.

The media has done everything they can think of to try to take people's thoughts away from this election, blaming Bush for using legal spy methods, to just plain ignoring the elections.

All this hype about the NSA is simply a ruse to push the elections and Bush's success into the background and to try to, once again, snatch defeat from victory.

The more Bush wins, the harder they try to discredit him, failing of course, especially now that he is fighting back.

[RJL]

FNC's Dana Lewis: It was all positive on election day in Iraq. After all how should we, could we, report it any differently.

I think Dana worked very hard to find a way to report the very successful Iraqi elections negatively.

[Marine_Uncle]

"its win/win either way"
Can't help but agree on your elucidations. Plus more we can come up with. The gloom squads can continue bitching and moaning, it is their right to do so. I just can't believe things are working out for the better, in essence GWB and companies primary goals have been, and will be completed. Which of course includes us having a permenant footprint in the center of the ME. There is no way Sistani is going to let some firebrand invite Iranian influence to take control. He wants nothing to do with the Persians and their form of Islam.

[Marine_Uncle]

"...hate takes a lot of energy and once you turn that tap off, it is hard to get excited at the prospect of blowing yourself up if you see that it won't do any good."
I think you are very correct. And I think it is already showing up to be the case. No one is forcing those large numbers of Sunni in Al Anbar from going to the polling places in much larger numbers then was hoped for. Same goes for Baghdad and the other resitive two provinces.
Only the real losers who never can be accepted, and the foreign fighters who still exist, are going to want to continue to cause trouble. And they on a 24/7/52 are being captured and killed as they dwindle in numbers and energy.

[Owl558]

"I refuse to believe the Iraqi people are too stupid to form a thriving democracy. I refuse to believe that almost 40 years of torture and misery have not lit the fire of freedom in the belly of most Iraqis."

Before EVERY milestone in Iraq, the media types come out and make asses out of themselves predicting gloom and endless doom. Remember how in the run up to war, we were going to lose it? And during the ground war, it was a quagmire. When our army was poised on the outskirts of Bagdad, they said were surely going to lose the house-to-house fighting. Before the first election they said it could never happen. Once it was over, they said it was great, but that there was going to be a civil war....

And freakin' on and on and on.

From the Cold war to the Gulf War and now Iraq, the vomited media-conventional wisdom has been WRONG!

[MNJohnnie]

Seen when is rumor and hearsay "NEWS". Funny how the FACTS do not match the rumors Dana is "reporting".