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October 22, 2004
How to Rig an Election
Here's an interesting juxtaposition of news items.
First, from the Washington Post:
Leaders of Iraq's religious parties have emerged as the country's most popular politicians and would win the largest share of votes if an election were held today, while the U.S.-backed government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is losing serious ground, according to a U.S.-financed poll by the International Republican Institute. . . .
President Bush said Tuesday that he would be "disappointed" if free and fair elections in Iraq led to the seating of an Islamic government, but that the United States would accept the results. "Democracy is democracy," he said. "If that's what people choose, that's what the people choose."
And if you believe that the administration is really going to let Islamists win, well, get a load of this:
U.S. and Iraqi forces detained a leading member of the Muslim Clerics' Association on Friday in what the influential Sunni group described as a campaign against opponents of the U.S. presence in Iraq.
Sheikh Abdel-Sattar Abdel-Jabbar, his two sons and a neighbor were arrested in a raid on the mosque compound where they live in the Tunis area of Baghdad around 1:30 a.m., association officials said.
"This arrest is part of a campaign not just against the Muslim Clerics' Association but all opposition voices," spokesman Mohamed Bashar al-Faidhi told Reuters. . . .
On Friday, Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops left a mosque they were raiding in a hunt for suspected bomb-makers in the northern city of Mosul, after coming under fire.
The preacher of that mosque, Sheikh Rayan Tawfik, is the Muslim Clerics' Association representative for that region.
In August, U.S. forces detained Muthanna Harith al-Dhari, a leading member of the Muslim Clerics Association and son of the group's secretary-general. He was later released.
Gunmen killed two members in Baghdad last month.
No one takes over another country just to let it go its own way, and neither has the Bush administration, much as they would like us to believe otherwise.
No doubt they wish they could lock up all prominent Democrats here as well.
(Thanks to Antiwar.com for the links.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at October 22, 2004 02:21 PM