Early Election Results in Iraq

Lookit that! It appears that even though the thugs in the White House wanted the secular-coalition head Ayad Allawi to beat out the religious factions in Iraq, Allawi is a big loser. The early election returns show that I could not have been more wrong about the White House influence in Iraq. The Sunnis may have come out in droves to vote in this election, and they may have felt bad that they stayed home for the last election, but they turned the tables and voted for the coalition that demanded President Bush set a timetable for the US military to get out of Iraq. And now, after the Bush representatives in Iraq taught the Iraqis everything they know about voter-fraud and how to throw elections in a democracy, the Iraqis are using the info against the Bush-backed coalition. The Allawi group has been whining that the Shiites have used “underhanded tactics”. What nerve, right George? What unmitigated gall. You try to teach these people about the democratic process, you try to show them that they have the right to vote for the people they want to run their country, and look at the thanks you get. The ingrates don’t vote the way they’ve been told to vote. And the Iraqis have no doubt learned a lesson or two about democracy from George W. Bush this past week also. Three years ago the Prez went to then-White House Counsel and present Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to find out if he could thumb his nose at the Constitution and break the law. GWB wanted to order wiretaps on Americans without warrants. Gonzales, who wrote a memo in August 2002 that approved the torture of US prisoners, told the Prez that, yes of course, Bush could do anything he wanted to because he didn’t have to abide by the Constitution or the rule of law. Then the President went to the ultra-conservative lawyer that the GOP had bought and paid for, John Choon Yoo, and asked him if it was okay to violate the Constitution and to break the rule of law about wiretapping without warrants. Yoo, who had written a brief about the Geneva Convention not applying to the US and its prisoners, said the president could do anything he wanted to do because George W. Bush was The Great I Am. With the go-ahead from torture advocates Gonzales and Yoo, President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to surveil and wiretap US citizens without warrants. When the President was outed last Thursday about the wiretaps, he said he wouldn’t discuss it. Then on Saturday he said he had done exactly what he was accused of doing. On Sunday he gave a 15-minute speech justifying his secret wiretaps because of the heinous activities of dictator Saddam Hussein. On Monday the Prez said whoever had revealed his secret wiretaps had committed a “shameful act”. And when queried about his use of "unchecked power" the president said, "to say ‘unchecked power’ basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject.” Or as Nixon said just before being proved he was a crook, “I am not a crook.” One thing has to be said about the Iraqis. They learn fast. Or perhaps it’s that with their past experience with dictators, they know one when they see one.