Early Results Show Religious Groups Leading in Iraqi Vote (Re: Iraq vote leaves Dems looking like the losers - *MARK STEYN*
- From: "kuff (Isaac Adams)" <kuff00@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 19 Dec 2005 10:32:54 -0800
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/international/middleeast/19cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1135054800&en=b0e5f6785bbe21ca&ei=5094&partner=homepage
http://tinyurl.com/96yjq
Early voting results announced by Iraqi electoral officials today
indicated that religious groups, particularly the main Shiite
coalition, had taken a commanding lead, with more than half of the
ballots having been counted.
The secular coalition led by Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister,
had won only meager support in crucial provinces where it had expected
to do well, including Baghdad.
The preliminary results accounted for more than 90 percent of votes
cast in 11 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Across the country, nearly seven
million ballots have been counted, of an estimated turnout of roughly
11 million voters, electoral officials said. ...
The strongest indication of religious-oriented voting emerged in the
results for Baghdad, the most diverse province the country. With 89
percent of the ballots counted, the main Shiite coalition, the United
Iraqi Alliance, had won 1.4 million votes, or 59 percent of the
ballots. The runner-up was the Iraqi Consensus Front, a religious Sunni
Arab coalition, with 19 percent of the votes. Mr. Allawi's secular
coalition, the Iraqi List, came in third, with 14 percent of the votes.
....
The electoral commission did not release early vote results for Anbar
Province, the heartland of the Sunni-led insurgency.
Bob Cooper wrote:
> http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn18.html
>
> Iraq vote leaves Dems looking like the losers
> December 18, 2005
> BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
>
> Well, that old Iraqi quagmire just keeps getting worse and worse, if only for
> the Democratic Party. What was the straw they were clutching at back in
> January? Oh, yeah, sure, gazillions of Kurds and Shiites might have gone to
> the polls, but where were the Sunni? As some of us said at the time, the
> Sunni'll come out tomorrow. And so they did. On Thursday, they voted in
> record numbers, leaving Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and the rest of
> the Democrats frantically scrambling for another disaffected Iraqi minority
> group they could use as proof that the whole crazy neocon war-for-oil scam
> was a bust.
>
> Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any disaffected Iraqi minority groups
> left. Oh, wait, there's Ahmed at 37 Sword of the Infidel Slayer Gardens in
> Ramadi. Apparently, he's still rejecting the new constitution. Maybe, if we're
> lucky, he's got a brother who's mildly irked. Whoops, sorry, they just went
> off to vote, too.
>
> Heigh-ho. The Iraq election's over, the media did their best to ignore it, and,
> judging from the rippling torsos I saw every time I switched on the TV, the
> press seem to reckon that that gay cowboy movie was the big geopolitical
> event of the last week, if not of all time. Yes, yes, I know: They're not,
> technically, cowboys, they're gay shepherds, but even Hollywood isn't crazy
> enough to think it can sell gay shepherds to the world. And the point is,
> even if I was in the mood for a story about two rugged insecure men who
> find themselves strangely attracted to each other in a dark transgressive
> relationship that breaks all the rules, who needs Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath
> Ledger when you've got Howard Dean and Abu Musad al-Zarqawi?
> Yee-haw! And, if that sounds unfair, pick almost any recent statement by
> a big-time Dem cowboy and tell me how exactly it would differ from the
> pep talks Zarqawi gives his dwindling band of head-hackers -- Dean
> arguing that America can't win in Iraq, Barbara Boxer demanding the
> troops begin withdrawing on Dec. 15, John Kerry accusing American
> soldiers of terrorizing Iraqi women and children, Jack Murtha declaring
> that the U.S. Army is utterly broken. Pepper 'em with a handful of "Praise
> be to Allahs" and any one of those statements could have been uttered by
> Zarqawi.
>
> The Democratic Party have contrived to get themselves into a situation
> where bad news from Iraq is good for them and good news from Iraq is
> bad for them. And as there's a lot more good news than bad these days,
> that puts them, politically, in a tough spot -- even with a fawning media
> that, faced with Kerry and Murtha talking what in any objective sense is
> drivel, decline to call for the men with white coats but instead nod
> solemnly and wonder whether Bush is living "in a bubble."
>
> One day Iraq will be a G7 member hosting the Olympics in the world's No.
> 1 luxury vacation resort of Fallujah, and the Defeaticrat Party will still be
> running around screaming it's a quagmire. It's not just that Iraq is going
> better than expected, but that it's a huge success that's being very deftly
> managed: The timeframe imposed on the democratic process turns out to
> have worked very well -- the transfer of sovereignty, the vote on a
> constitutional assembly, the ratification of the constitution, the vote for a
> legislature -- and, with the benefit of hindsight, it now looks like an
> ingeniously constructed way to bring the various parties on board in the
> right order: first the Kurds, then the Shia, now the Sunni. That doesn't
> leave many folks over on the other side except Zarqawi and Dean. What
> do the two have in common? They're both foreigners, neither of whom
> have the slightest interest in the Iraqi people.
>
> And no, I'm not questioning their patriotism. Honestly, who can be
> bothered questioning anything so footling as Howard Dean's patriotism?
> If you're a Democratic patriot and you're outraged by my linking your party
> to the "insurgents," take it up with your leaders: They're the ones who've
> over-invested the party in American failure. And instead of being angry at
> me you should be ashamed of them. Your party is regarded as unserious
> on national security because it got it wrong last time round, when Kerry
> spent the last half of the Cold War siding with every loser on the planet --
> opposing the liberation of Grenada, supporting the Sandinistas in
> Nicaragua. And at least that little Sandinista guy looked awful cute in his
> fatigues, like a novelty houseboy Teresa picked up on vacation. It's hard
> to believe a bunch of crazy mullahs and suicide bombers are going to do
> much for the lefty T-shirt business.
>
> George Clooney, the matinee idol, made an interesting point the other
> day. He said that "liberal" had become a dirty word and he'd like to change
> that. Fair enough. So I hope he won't mind if I make a suggestion. The
> best way to reclaim "liberal" for the angels is to get on the right side of
> history -- the side the Iraqi people are on. The word "liberal" has no
> meaning if those who wear the label refuse to celebrate the birth of a new
> democracy after 40 years of tyranny. Yet, if you wandered the Internet on
> Thursday, you came across far too many "liberals" who watched the
> election, shrugged and went straight back to Valerie Plame, WMD, Bush
> lied.
>
> Bush lied, people dyed. Their fingers. That's what this is about: Millions of
> Kurds, Shia and Sunnis beaming as they emerge from polling stations and
> hold up their purple fingers after the freest, fairest election ever held in the
> Arab world. "Liberal" in the American sense is a dirty word because it's
> come to stand for a shriveled parochial obsolescent irrelevance, of which
> ''Good Night, and Good Luck,'' Clooney's dreary little retread of the
> McCarthy years, is merely the latest example. (Clooney says he wants
> more journalists to "speak truth to power," which is why I'm insulting his
> movie.)
>
> The Anglo-American political tradition is the most successful in the world
> in part because of the concept of "loyal opposition." Yes, the party out of
> office opposes the party in office and hopes to supplant it, but not at the
> expense of the broader political culture. A party that winds up cheerleading
> for a deranged loser death cult is the very definition of pointless
> self-defeating sour oppositionism. So, as Zarqawi flails, Dean and Murtha
> and Kerry flail ever more pathetically, too. Just wait till the WMD turn up.
> =======================================================
>
> "Just wait till the WMD turn up." ROFL! And, they might, folks. They
> just might :>)
.
- References:
- Iraq vote leaves Dems looking like the losers - *MARK STEYN*
- From: Bob Cooper
- Iraq vote leaves Dems looking like the losers - *MARK STEYN*
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