HOME
Message Board
CURRENT COLUMNS
- Editor's Corner
- Blogfest 2005
- Commentary
- Commentary Too
- Down The Middle
- Faulking Around
- Global Warning
- This guy walks into a bar...
- Investing 101
- Faulking Opinions
- Off The Rail
- Words
ARCHIVES
LINKS
CONTACT US
 | |||
Commentary Too - Feb 6, 2005 - Printable Version
- The Election That Bush Couldn't Win
by Mark Faulk
It was months before the election, but New York Congressman Peter King was so sure of the outcome of the Presidential race that, after apparently having a few too many drinks at a White House barbecue, when documentary film maker Alexandra Pelosi asked him who he thought would win the election, King replied, "It's already over, the election's over. We won. It's all over but the counting, and we'll take care of the counting." It was classic Neocon bravado, a kind of "we'll do whatever it takes to get what we want" mentality. It doesn't matter how Americans vote, because "we'll take care of the counting". http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater256.html
And take care of the counting is exactly what they did. In an election marred by charges of massive irregularities in the "electronic voting" system set up and controlled by Bush cronies, Bush swaggered into his second term, and lost no time in declaring the election that was decided by 100,000 questionable votes in Ohio "a mandate". This is truly an Administration used to getting it's way, utilizing whatever means necessary.
That's why, when, in an interview with the New York Times a few days before the Iraqi election, President Bush, said he would withdraw American troops if the winner of the election asked him to, but then said: ''I've, you know, heard the voices of the people that presumably will be in a position of responsibility after these elections - although you never know, but it seems like most of the leadership there understands that there will be a need for coalition troops at least until Iraqis are able to fight.''
You don't have to read very far between the lines to know what our President really meant. He was saying exactly the same thing about the Iraqi election that Rep. King said about the American presidential election months earlier. He was saying that we would leave if the winners of the Iraqi election asked us to, but they won't because, "It's already over, the election's over. We won."
There was only one problem. Despite spending millions of American taxpayer dollars in Iraq on TV ads and putting the full weight of American support behind Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, Allawi was trounced in the election by the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), whose leaders have close ties to Iran, by a four to one margin (now that's a mandate). Despite our best efforts, "we" didn't win. We lost, and in a big way.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a moderate Shia who is expected to be named by the UIA as Iraq's Prime Minister, told the UK's Telegraph that he will welcome Moqtadr al-Sadr, the demagogic Shia cleric behind bloody uprisings against coalition forces, into the new government. al-Sadr, whose rebel Mahdi army has systematically killed American and British troops since the war began, on Friday called for all coalition troops to be withdrawn. That's right, the leader of the same "terrorist factions" who American officials have been saying must be "killed or captured" for his atrocities against our troops, and who has ties with Iran, the Bush Administration's next target, is now being welcomed into the new government elected by Iraq's much-heralded "first Democratic election in history".
Then, in a display of politics that should have impressed even the Bush Administration, when asked if Dr Allawi could remain prime minister, Dr Jaafari suggested it would be undemocratic to give the job to a man who finished a distant second: "We have to respect the choice of the voters and prove we are really taking into consideration the process of election."
Once again, Iraq has refused to cooperate with the Bush Administration. While the Neocons have had their way with the American voters, utilizing disinformation, scare tactics, and imaginary moral values to keep control of our country, the war in Iraq has gone horribly wrong from the very start. Americans have been told repeatedly that the war has gone exactly as planned (although the reasons for going to war in the first place have changed on a regular basis), but the truth is this war has never been in our control.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and cronies expected Iraq to fall in line after the symbolic toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue only 21 days after the war began. It was an image played and replayed around the world, but, unknown to those who viewed the video footage, it was orchestrated by US Marines, and pulled down by a chain hooked to a Marine jeep, not by jubilant Iraqis, as was widely reported by the media. According to an internal Army study of the war released in July of last year, it was a Marine colonel who decided to topple the statue, and it was a quick-thinking Army psychological team who used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi citizens to gather around and packed the Marine jeep with Iraqi children to make it appear as if the event was a spontaneous moment led by the "liberated" Iraqis. Later photos revealed that there were no more than a few dozen people in the square in Baghdad that day, and most of them were American soldiers. In other words, even the "reality" that American citizens thought they saw was fabricated from the very beginning.
www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/july2004/030704stagedmanaged.htm
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm
The truth is, we have never been fully supported by the Iraqi citizens, and the results of the election and the proposed inclusion of al-Sahd in the new government indicates that we are no more welcome there than Saddam himself. It is also clear that the Bush Administration's idea of a "Free Iraq", and of the spread of Democracy to the Mideast, is far different than the reality of what the Iraqi people want. Bush has hinged all his efforts on the assumption that Iraq, in fact any so-called "dictatorship", would choose an Americanized Democracy if given the opportunity. The just completed election in Iraq is a clear message that Iraqis want to choose their own form of government, and that that government will bear little resemblance to the image of an Americanized Democracy that Bush has fostered.
It is time for this Administration to face the facts about the war in Iraq, to quit trying to use scripted "Mission Accomplished" photo opps in an attempt to create a Hollywood-style ending that has nothing to do with reality. If in fact the new Iraqi government does ask us to pack up our weapons and leave, and it's beginning to look like that is exactly what they will do, it is time for Bush to, finally, keep his word. It is time to bring our boys, and girls, home. And that, fellow Americans, is the Faulking Truth.
Voice your opinion on our message board (you don't have to sign up to post).