Baghdad gripped in fear ahead of elections

[leftchick]

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&art_id=vn20050112070002253C937992&click_id=2813&set_id=1

~snip~


"They want me to vote but they can't protect me," he says. "Maybe there will be no suicide bomber at the polling station. But I will be watched. And what if I get a handgrenade in my home three days' later?

"The Americans will say they did their best, Allawi's people will say I am a 'martyr for democracy'. So do you think I'm going to vote?"

At Moustansariya University - one of Iraq's best - students of English literature are to face their end of term exam. January marks the end of Iraqi semesters. But one of the students tells me that his fellow students had told their teacher that - so fraught are the times - that they were not yet prepared for the examinations. Rather than giving them all zeros, the teacher meekly postponed the exam.

I drive back through the Al-Hurriya intersection beside the Green Zone - the hermetically sealed compound from which Iraq is supposedly governed - and suddenly there is a big black 4x4, filled with ski-masked gunmen.

"Get back!" they scream at every motorist as they try to cut across the median. I roll the window down. The rear door of the 4x4 whacks open. A ski-masked Westerner - blond hair, blue eyes - is pointing a Kalashnikov at my car.

"Get back!" he shrieks in ghastly Arabic. Then he clears the median, followed by three armoured pick-ups, windows blacked, tyres skidding on the road, carrying the Westerners to the dubious safety of the Green Zone.

I glance at the Iraqi press. Colin Powell is again warning of "civil war" in Iraq. Why do we Westerners keep threatening civil war in a country whose society is tribal rather than sectarian?

[radfringe]

1. civil war

well, as I see it -- it will just be a new name for the continuation of the war

I don't see anything changing after the (s)election. The insurgents will just be renamed "rebels" and the Iraq-Invasion-War will be renamed "Iraq Civil War"

bombs will still explode, people will still be killed and maimed, blood will still be spilled and bush* will still blather about how things are getting better for the Iraqi people and that the press is only printing "bad things" (except for those in the press who are on bush*'s payroll)

the only "new" thing I can see is rolling out the "terra-terra-terra" blather -- changing the title from WMDs in Iraq - to WMDs in Syria and/or Iran

the official hunt for WMDs in Iraq is over -- so where are the WMDs? gee they must have moved them to "--fill in the blank--". YEEE-HAWWWW, let's hunt them down....

Team hunting Iraq WMD ends its search
By Dafna Linzer, Washington Post | January 12, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/01/12/team_hunting_iraq_wmd_ends_its_search/

WASHINGTON -- The hunt for biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered US troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley, Va.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the survey group's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

[leftchick]

2. and those assertions (better known as LIES!) were used.....

over and over ad naseum by the librul media in the run up to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Heads should be rolling somewhere!!!

:grr: :argh: :puke:

[saigon68]

3. A ski-masked Westerner - blond hair, = A MERCENARY

With a Ski Mask-- This criminal can "GREASE" any Rag-Head He wants to, and no one, least of All the AMERIKAN MILITARY,will do anything about it.

Love the reference to the Kalashnikov. Wait until these hooligans do this on the streets of amerika. (With their ski Masks)

[leftchick]

4. That threw me off...

Kalashnikov?? Perhaps that is the Iraqi generic term for any automatic weapon?

[saigon68]

6. Must be

Most mercenary THUGS AND HOODLUMS carry Car-15s or M-4 Carbines

See Below

[no_to_war_economy]

5. only 12% consider the elections "legitimate."

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?ID=35720


Only 32 percent of Sunni Muslims are "very likely" to vote.

Among Shiites, 87 percent said they are "very likely" to vote.

Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs consider the elections "legitimate."

Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs think the elections will be completely fair.

52 percent of Shiites think the elections will be completely fair.

61% of Sunni Arabs are very concerned about their family's safety.

24% of Shiites are very concerned about their family's safety.

Among Shiites, 76% would boycott if a figure such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani told them to.

Only 32 percent of Sunni Arabs said they would boycott simply because a religious figure asked them to.

88% of Sunnis would stay home if they felt voting would put them in danger.

38% of Shiites say they would stay home if their are threats of violence against polling stations.