{"id":1670,"date":"2005-01-20T06:59:48","date_gmt":"2005-01-20T13:59:48","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-01-20T06:59:48","modified_gmt":"2005-01-20T13:59:48","slug":"vote-or-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/20\/vote-or-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Vote or Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

Falah Hassan al-Naqib<\/a>, Iraq’s Interior Minister, told the Associated Press <\/a> on Tuesday that anyone who fails to vote in the upcoming elections is guilty of a criminal act:<\/p>\n

“‘If any group does not participate in the elections, it will constitute treason,’ al-Naqib said, adding that ‘boycotting the elections will not produce a National Assembly that represents the Iraqi people’ but instead will bring on ‘a civil war that will divide the country.'”<\/i> <\/p>\n

And just to make sure everyone participates in this mandatory exercise of “freedom,” on election day the entire country is going on lockdown: closed borders, a lengthened curfew, and “about 300,000 Iraqi and multinational troops” on the streets “providing security” — and also no doubt checking to see who votes and who doesn’t. Making abstention just as risky as voting is bound to increase turnout.<\/p>\n

As George W. Bush has repeatedly <\/a> stated<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Or, as Henry Ford once said<\/a>: <\/p>\n

“People can have the Model T in any color — so long as it’s black.”<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Falah Hassan al-Naqib, Iraq’s Interior Minister, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that anyone who fails to vote in the upcoming elections is guilty of a criminal act: “‘If any group does not participate in the elections, it will constitute treason,’ al-Naqib said, adding that ‘boycotting the elections will not produce a National Assembly that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1670"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}