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BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Three mostly Sunni Arab political parties announced on Wednesday that they have formed a coalition to run in Iraq's parliamentary election in December. The three - the General Conference for the People of Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi National Dialogue - have been urging Sunnis to take part in the Dec. 15 election. They named their coalition the Iraqi Accord, said Ayad al-Samarrie, a senior official in the Iraqi Islamic Party.

Iraqis Vote on New Constitution Early Estimates Show Turnout Was Strong, Even Among Sunnis Associated Press October 15, 2005 3:35 p.m. BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's deeply divided Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds voted in large numbers on a new constitution Saturday -- a referendum mostly free of insurgent violence and aimed at establishing democracy after decades of Saddam Hussein's repressive rule. In the south, Shiite women in head-to-toe veils and men emerged from the poll stations flashing victory signs with fingers stained with violet ink, apparently responding in mass to the call by their top cleric to support the charter. But...

BAGHDAD, Oct 15 (KUNA) -- Polling stations were closed Saturday to end a vote on a referendum on Iraq's draft constitution. The polling stations closed the doors at 1700 hours local time (1400 GMT) nationwide, ending 10 hours of voting. Millions of Iraqis flocked to cast ballots during the 10-hour vote. Polling stations were crowded with voters specially in the south, north and secured areas in central and western Iraq. The referendum started with the vote of President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari in the green zone in Baghdad. This was followed by millions of voters flocking to...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (UPI) -- Iraqi politicians said Saturday that a new alliance of liberal parties and figures will be formed soon, led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The head of the Iraqi Democratic Party Assem al-Jani, who is also one of 15 Arab Sunni members in the constitution commission, announced the alliance in a news conference in Baghdad. He said he expected a victory for the new liberal alliance in the next general elections at the end of the year 'to give us a chance to rebuild Iraq after the current government has failed to do so.'

An MP who was a founder member of Labour Against the War has quit the group, saying that after last month’s elections in Iraq he now believed Allied troops should remain in the country, it emerged today. Harry Barnes’ defection will be welcomed by the Labour leadership, which fears that many of the party’s traditional supporters will stay at home in the forthcoming General Election because of anger over Iraq. The North-East Derbyshire MP, who is stepping down at the election, accused his former colleagues in the anti-war movement of retailing "simple-minded" claims about the extent of civilian casualties in...

Breaking News: Shiite victory is Certified -Foxnews Headline- Iraq Certifies Elections; Shiite Bloc Gets Assembly Majority More to come

The results of the January 30 elections announced Sunday by the Independent Electoral Commission are another giant step towards building a free and democratic Iraq. Voter turnout, at almost 59 percent, was higher than an U.S. election since 1968. That in itself can be counted as a victory, though hardly surprising except to the chronically pessimistic. But the election results do not in themselves settle the question of who will take power in the transitional government. Handicapping is underway on who will take the top leadership positions. This is taking the form of a debate within the victorious United Iraqi...

The Today Show just reported Iraqi election results. The current spin on the results is this: 1. Many of the Shiite leaders lived in, and were supported by, Iran during Saddam's reign. Therefore, Iran will have undue influence over the Iraqi leaders and constitution. Therefore, the election is a failure. Therefore the Bush administration is a failure. Bush lied. People died. So, pretty much the same old, same old. 2. The lovely Ms. Katie Couric mentioned the poor, "disenfranchised" Sunnis. I'm so absolutely, completely upset about how people are throwing around this world, "disenfranchisement" in both Iraq and America. You...

Analysis: Votes Show Islam Party Strength By SALLY BUZBEEASSOCIATED PRESS CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - For years, opponents of free elections in the Arab world have whispered warnings that if democracy ever came to this region, Islamic fundamentalists would sweep to power. Now, with votes counted in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, it's clear there's truth to the idea that strongly conservative, Islam-driven candidates fare well. In Iraq, a coalition linked to the country's main Shiite Muslim cleric won 48 percent of the votes in the first free elections in a half-century. And in the first phase of Saudi elections for...

The votes have been cast – if not yet fully counted – and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy owes the brave people of Iraq a profound apology. Some 8 million Iraqis on Jan. 30 defied terrorists' threats of violence and death to cast their ballots for a more hopeful future than Mr. Kennedy was willing to grant them. In so doing, Iraqis, who hadn't voted in free elections in a half-century, gave the lie to the Massachusetts Democrat's nakedly partisan rant three days before the balloting that the war that made the voting possible was "a colossal failure, a continuing quagmire."...

Baghdad, Iraq — A few weeks ago the election season opened with a bang in Baquba, a city of 280,000 people located on the eastern edge of the Sunni Triangle. On the evening of January 16th several mortars suddenly slammed into our Army compound, known as the CMOC, or Civil-Military Operations Center. After seeing the blue flashes of exploding shells outside the window of the small, cement, Iraqi-style bungalow we were working in, and being covered by a thin film of dust that filtered down from the ceiling, my fellow soldiers and I said, "Phew, those were CLOSE!" We immediately...

NASSER WA AL SALAAM, Iraq — On Sunday, we helped give birth to a nation. My civil-affairs team and our Marines acted as midwives in the most historic event that I have ever participated in. There has not been uncorrupted voting in Iraq in over 80 years, and there has never been Shia electoral dominance in an Arab country before. This is the first truly honest and important election in the history of Iraq. The torch of freedom lit in 1776 has now been passed to Afghanistan and Iraq. This is America’s payment for what we have received from the...

On the Iraqi election Tuesday, February 01, 2005 As even the French and Germans saluted the courage of the Iraqi people who chose liberty under threat of death, one would think that the astonishing success of Iraq's elections would have muted, at least temporarily, the voices of the Democrat defeatists in Congress such as Ted Kennedy. But to admit the Iraqi elections were a stunning success would mean George Bush was right and they were wrong. Like the sea of orange flags that welcomed true democracy to the Ukraine, a sea of proudly extended purple fingers in Iraq welcomed true...

'Iraq Elections a Fraud' Claim Democrats Washington D.C. Congressional Democrats today claimed Sunday's historic elections in Iraq were "a cheap piece of theater staged on the same sets used to fake the moon landings!" Senator Edward "the swimmer" Kennedy (D-MA) charged that Karl Rove, along with unnamed Hollywood conservative actors, producers and directors, dusted off the old moon landing sound stages at White Sands NM that Rove used back in 1968 to fake the first moon landing. When reached for comment Rove claimed, "I don't know what the Hell they're barking about, but then I believe the moon landings were...

Every once in a while I read something so profoundly disturbing that I can't put it out of my mind. That happened the other day when I read a piece in the American Conservative by Fred Reed where he discussed the plight of the terribly badly wounded veterans of the Iraq war. It should not have come as a surprise – I know that wars do dreadful harm to some of those who fight them – and although we mourn the dead, we seem to prefer not to think about those living but terribly maimed warriors whose lives have been...

As the day of the historic Iraqi elections came to a close the incapability of the vitiated Baathist/Islamofascist forces to carry out their bloody, histrionic threats became apparent. They were not able to exact casualties above the normal accident rate in a country of 27 million people. The low level of terrorist violence came as a surprise to most observers, but in fact a combination of factors, many of them largely unreported or misreported in the mainstream news media, contributed to this happy turn of events. First, while the Bush Administration may have at first underestimated the size of the...

January 31, 2005 Greetings friends, What we have witnessed is something amazing. I am an Iraqi and a Baghdadi and should know, and deep down in my heart I knew; yet I must admit that I did not expect all this. The common Iraqi citizen has taken all by surprise, including those of us who are indigenous to this land. It was expected that relatively secure areas in the South and North were going to see heavy turnout. Yet Baghdad; subjected to a terrorist and intimidation campaign of unprecedented scale and cruelty; Baghdad, deprived of electricity, fuel and lately even...

NAJAF, Iraq, Feb. 1 - Salim Yacoubi bent over to kiss the purple ink stain on his twin brother's right index finger, gone cold with death. "You can see the finger with which he voted," Shukur Jasim, a friend of the dead man, said as he cast a tearful gaze on the corpse, sprawled across a body washer's concrete slab. "He's a martyr now." The stain marked the hard-won right to vote that the man, Naim Rahim Yacoubi, had exercised on Sunday - and the price he paid. Mr. Yacoubi, 37, was one of at least 50 Iraqis who died...

PARIS, Jan 31 (AFP) - The Iraqi elections showed "the strategy of terrorist groups partly failed," French President Jacques Chirac told his US counterpart George W. Bush by telephone Monday, officials in Paris said. The Sunday poll was "an important stage in the political reconstruction" of Iraq, Chirac told Bush in the 15-minute conversation, according to presidential spokesman Jerome Bonnafont. The French leader said the turnout and technical organisation of the elections was "satisfactory," he added. Between 60 and 75 percent of registered voters were estimated to have cast ballots. The result of the elections would not be known for...

I come to the Golden EIB Microphone today, ladies and gentlemen, with just an effervescing and bubbling joy and happiness and pride knowing full well that some in America are devastated today because the Democrats have lost their second election in three months. The Democratic Party lost its second election in three months yesterday in Iraq. There is no question that the sentiments of the leadership of the Democratic Party were with the terrorists and the insurgents who sought to undermine yesterday's election in Iraq. Once again, the American left, much of the mainstream media, the liberal wing of the...