Sunday, January 30, 2005

Elections in Iraq

Rumsfeld told us, just after the fall of Baghdad, that the violence was a few dead enders. Once we collected up those "deck of cards" criminals, all would be well. It got worse. Then they blamed it on Saddam loyalists, and predicted once Saddam was caught, it would get better. It got worse. Then they said that once power is handed over to the Iraqi's own government last June, the violence and insecurity would get better. It got worse. Then they claimed that if they went into Fallujah and "cleaned that up", it would get better there in Iraq, and the insurgents would go away, because we took away their base of operations. It got worse. Now, they are touting this election tomorrow as the doorway to "democracy"... in spite of the fact that most Iraqis will not vote, either because of the violence or because they do not seen the election as legitimate. They are claiming (now) that the violence may continue for awhile, but things will get better. It will not. It will get worse. This election is a sham.

I can't help but wondering something... if the US authorities (Rumsfeld, Powell, Franks, and the Bush administration) had acted like they cared a little bit about the Iraqi people... if things might have gone better. Like, you know, saying torturing people is wrong, killing people is wrong.... but then, hey, the whole idea of war is wrong, so that would have been stupid, I guess. But the fact that they made NO ATTEMPT to ever count the Iraqis who were hurt or killed does speak volumes, does it not?

I care about Iraqis. They do not.

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