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Az-Zaman reports that the “Cadres and Chosen Party” of 180 members of the Sadr Movement is coming in third in the early election returns [in the south], after the mainstream Shiite United Iraqi Alliance and the Iraqiyah list of interim Prime Minister Allawi. So far the Cadres are guaranteed 8 seats in the 275-member parliament, according to its leader. Since about 20 Sadrists ran on the UIA, they could make up 6 or 7 percent of the members of parliament. Had their leader not sat out the election, the Sadrists could have done much better. They note that Muqtada al-Sadr did not forbid them to run. One of the prominent list members was a Mahdi Army guerrilla fighter in Sadr City only a few months ago.
There have been a lot of turnout estimates thrown around fast and loose — hopefully we will have a better indication of the truth soon.
But the International Organization for Migration (IOM) seems to have learned some propaganda techniques from the previous Iraqi leader. The IOM was in charge of out-of-country voting by Iraqis. This morning they released the news that “94 percent of registered expats voted.” This sounds awesome, and if true, must be a result of the fact that security and intimidation were not significant issues abroad (right?). However, they fail to mention that less than 25% of eligible Iraqi expats registered to vote.
One little-publicized reason for this low expat registration: Iraqi expats were required to travel to one of the polling-place cities a week before the election to register, then return a week later to actually vote. I assume that this would have been a significant hardship for many. In the US, there were five such cities, and many countries with expat populations had none. Within Iraq, same-day registration made this issue a moot point.
A fascinating Zogby poll of Iraqis was released yesterday.
Some key results:
has a reasonably good record in the US, but it must take some radical rethinking of his methodology to get accurate results in today’s Iraq. Some interesting results here.
Investor’s Business Daily wants the US to invade Syria:
Regime change in Syria should be the ultimate goal of the civilized world.
And they seem to have no illusions about it:
A move against Syria would no doubt have given critics even more reason to make the Vietnam comparison: Syria would be to Iraq what Laos and Cambodia were to Vietnam.
Yes….
But so what? Critics do little other than criticize. And in this case, they’d do nothing to make our troops safer in Iraq except bring them home, which would only make the world less safe for others.
The editorial continues to explain how Syria is the most evil nation on Earth. For the life of me, I don’t understand how they think this is good for business.
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