They Are Voting In Iraq – Anybody Notice?

[darrels joy]

They Are Voting In Iraq – Anybody Notice?

Discreetly buried in the back pages of a disillusioned New York Times:

Early Voting in Iraq Is Mostly Smooth

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and STEVEN LEE MYERS
January 29, 2009

BAGHDAD — Thousands of soldiers, police officers, hospital patients and prisoners cast ballots on Wednesday as part of early voting in Iraq’s provincial elections.

At least one act of violence accompanied the voting. Two police officers guarding a polling center south of Kirkuk were killed by gunmen who fired at them from a passing car, according to an official from the Ministry of Interior who spoke on condition of anonymity. The gunmen escaped, the official said.

Overall, however, the voting appeared to go smoothly, Iraqi election officials said.

About 615,000 people, most of them employed by Iraq’s security forces, were eligible to vote Wednesday, three days before Saturday’s election. Government officials said the early balloting would help ensure that security forces would be on duty to protect polling stations on Saturday, when about 14 million more Iraqis are eligible to vote.

“The arrangements we are seeing today are a slap in the face to those who are betting that Iraqis will not go to the ballot box because they are despairing,” Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said in a speech on Wednesday.

More than 14,000 candidates are running for 440 seats on provincial councils in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The election will be delayed in Kirkuk Province, a troubled region where much of Iraq’s oil reserves lie, and in the three provinces of Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region.

The local councils function much like state legislatures, but are also responsible for selecting governors and provincial police chiefs.

Perhaps most important, the councils are a prime source of patronage. They dole out government jobs, social benefits and contracts, each an invaluable asset in a country that has high unemployment rates and significant poverty — but that is expected to embark on a major government-sponsored rebuilding program over the next few years…

Of course most of the “reporters” in our media would rather tear out their eyes than admit what a tremendous victory this represents for our military’s courageous efforts in Iraq.

Indeed, in a few years, if this victory isn’t given away, it will be taught that it was Mr. Obama’s gentle words and foreign aid that brought Democracy to the Middle East.

Despite everything that the war monger George Bush did to prevent it.

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/t...anybody-notice