Iraq holds democratic elections

[Glenn]

What do you think about the elections in Iraq? I think this is a great step for the country and I'm beginning to be convinced that we do have a reason over there.

[Link04]

70% of the registered voters voted.....



out of how many registered? 25% of the population?


If that figure is correct, the people have spoken, and it's not democracy they want.

[Glenn]

A lot of people were very excited about receiving the freedom to vote. You have to take into account:
1. This was the first election so not everyone is going to vote for the first time.
2. People were threatened that whoever votes would get killed.

[Derek The Infamous]

People will always find a way to find negatives out of anything we do as a country, so dont worry about it.

Personally I'm very happy and I hope the new leader there will be able to run Iraq the right way. It's about time that country is unoppressed, people fail to notice that we have a large Iraqi population here because they fled from there.

[Kate]

Good for them. Now if the U.S. would just figure out a reasonable way to get out of there...

[lpsk8er]

It's good to hear that they can finally vote and choose their leader.

[Link04]

Originally posted by Duffy@Feb 1 2005, 03:27 AM
A lot of people were very excited about receiving the freedom to vote. You have to take into account:
1. This was the first election so not everyone is going to vote for the first time.
2. People were threatened that whoever votes would get killed.
And a lot of people didn't bother voting, because their ethnic group had no chance of representation, or they didn't want to give their fingerprints up to the government.

[lofton0788]

good for them...i think we always had reason to be in there...enough of all the liberal media bias

[Glenn]

Originally posted by Link04+Feb 1 2005, 07:15 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Link04 @ Feb 1 2005, 07:15 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
Originally posted by -Duffy@Feb 1 2005, 03:27 AM
A lot of people were very excited about receiving the freedom to vote. You have to take into account:
1. This was the first election so not everyone is going to vote for the first time.
2. People were threatened that whoever votes would get killed.
And a lot of people didn&#39;t bother voting, because their ethnic group had no chance of representation, or they didn&#39;t want to give their fingerprints up to the government.[/b]
Yeah. I&#39;m not saying everyone was excited but there were people who were excited about the new voting.

<!--QuoteBegin--Derek@Feb 1 2005, 02:18 AM
People will always find a way to find negatives out of anything we do as a country, so dont worry about it.

Personally I&#39;m very happy and I hope the new leader there will be able to run Iraq the right way. It&#39;s about time that country is unoppressed, people fail to notice that we have a large Iraqi population here because they fled from there. [/quote]

I agree. However, we don&#39;t know how well the leader will do at running the country. We do know that, in our democratic based opinions, it will be much better than Saddam.

[Todd]

We put Saddam in power. I can see America making the same mistake the 2nd time around.

[linkin_sylph]

Originally posted by Todd@Feb 1 2005, 08:26 PM
We put Saddam in power. I can see America making the same mistake the 2nd time around.
Exactly.

But it might not be a "mistake" for America. Whoever&#39;s the leader will definetly create ties with the US and Iraq&#39;s oil.

[Mark]

Originally posted by linkin_sylph+Feb 2 2005, 03:58 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (linkin_sylph @ Feb 2 2005, 03:58 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Todd@Feb 1 2005, 08:26 PM
We put Saddam in power. I can see America making the same mistake the 2nd time around.
Exactly.

But it might not be a "mistake" for America. Whoever&#39;s the leader will definetly create ties with the US and Iraq&#39;s oil. [/b][/quote]
You mean, be completely controlled by America into giving oil?

[Odaton]

From www.Reliefweb.int:


WASHINGTON, July 1 (AFP) - A force of 145,000 US troops may be needed in Iraq for as many as five years, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Richard Myers said Thursday.
"We can do that and we&#39;ve got plans to do that for as long as it takes, because this will be event-driven, not time-line driven," the told PBS television.

The US military announced earlier in the week it will recall around 5,600 troops who already served in Iraq for support and logistics duty, and Myers said the call-back was needed to beef up current troop strength.

"We&#39;re a 20th-century force in a 21st-century security environment," he said.

"In the meantime, we have to rely on other tools," he said.

"It will take six months, a year, a year-and-a-half, two years, three years, probably four or five years before we get this force set to have the kind of skills where we need them to do the kind of things we need to do in this security environment," he said.

"It will be events on the ground and commanders&#39; estimates that will help us there," he said.

What the hell do they mean by that (in bold)? Obviously they want to have a solid military prescence to make sure that the &#39;government&#39; in Iraq conform with the demands of the Americans.

This whole election thing is such a big propaganda statement it sickens me&#33; Do you REALLY think that the government and all of the large contruction/oil corporations who are looking over at Iraq really care if their people are &#39;free&#39; or not?

Its simple: The US needs oil, and Saddam wasn&#39;t warming up to Dubya. So they needed to take him out and install &#39;democracy&#39; to get another leader that would warm up to them. Now they are using this whole democracy thing (as they did with terrorism and WMDs in the first place) to make people think we are doing the right thing. You guys better read up on some American politics over the past 50 years because this excuse has been used so many times by their government that you&#39;d think people would catch onto it by now&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;

[F-ck Casey]

Eh, the thing about Bush getting Saddam out of power for oil seems plausible, and I actually think Bush would do that, but I still believe that Saddam needed to be taken out of power. Sure, he&#39;s not as bad as Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler, but he was still a tyrant in his own right, and I think he needed to be put out of office. Perhaps Bush knew this as well, and acted on it, but there was underlining reasons as well.

I don&#39;t know, maybe that&#39;s the Patriotic American in me talking, but you can&#39;t convince me Saddam didn&#39;t need to be taken out of power. That&#39;s just simply what I think.

[Odaton]

Originally posted by Casey@Feb 2 2005, 11:09 PM
Eh, the thing about Bush getting Saddam out of power for oil seems plausible, and I actually think Bush would do that, but I still believe that Saddam needed to be taken out of power. Sure, he&#39;s not as bad as Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler, but he was still a tyrant in his own right, and I think he needed to be put out of office. Perhaps Bush knew this as well, and acted on it, but there was underlining reasons as well.

I don&#39;t know, maybe that&#39;s the Patriotic American in me talking, but you can&#39;t convince me Saddam didn&#39;t need to be taken out of power. That&#39;s just simply what I think.
Well, I can&#39;t say that Saddam did nothing wrong&#33; He certainly did and he made the situation in Iraq pretty grim. However, why out of ALL the dictators in the world did we choose him? I mean in Africa, theres brutal dictatorships killing thousands every year. In Rwanda, just around the time of the Gulf War, the government killed almost a million people in a matter of weeks&#33;

I was at a presentation made by the commanding General of the UN forces in Rwanda, for my World Issues class. He said that 4,000 troops could have made the difference and broken up the conflict. Why did the US sit on their hands for this conflict? They blame Saddam for a crime happening in a dozen other countries (an much worse in some than Iraq&#33;), so why did they choose to step in here? Obviously its for geopolitical/economic reasons. With the US oil companies trying to keep oil reserves secure so they don&#39;t lose profits, the government goes for Saddam because he&#39;s sitting under the 2nd largest oil reserve in the World. Its that freakin simple.

[F-ck Casey]

I agree 100%.

I said in my original post that I agree with Bush going after Saddam for the oil, but I also think Saddam deserved to be put out of power.

But there are other tyrants out there that need it more than Saddam, but he had the oil, so Bush went after him.

[Razan]

From what I heard: Bush chose them both anyways so whoever the Iraqis chose, Bush&#39;s going to win.
They will supply America with as much oil as they can afford under this new leader.

[Todd]

Originally posted by Odaton@Feb 2 2005, 05:22 PM
Well, I can&#39;t say that Saddam did nothing wrong&#33; He certainly did and he made the situation in Iraq pretty grim. However, why out of ALL the dictators in the world did we choose him? I mean in Africa, theres brutal dictatorships killing thousands every year. In Rwanda, just around the time of the Gulf War, the government killed almost a million people in a matter of weeks&#33;

I was at a presentation made by the commanding General of the UN forces in Rwanda, for my World Issues class. He said that 4,000 troops could have made the difference and broken up the conflict. Why did the US sit on their hands for this conflict? They blame Saddam for a crime happening in a dozen other countries (an much worse in some than Iraq&#33;), so why did they choose to step in here? Obviously its for geopolitical/economic reasons. With the US oil companies trying to keep oil reserves secure so they don&#39;t lose profits, the government goes for Saddam because he&#39;s sitting under the 2nd largest oil reserve in the World. Its that freakin simple.
Word. Bush will never go after evil African dictators because there&#39;s no benefit for him. Iraq has oil, which was the motive behind this entire war.

And I agree that Saddam needed to be taken out of power, however, it was not our job to do it. We shouldn&#39;t be babysitting the world.

[goso88]

I&#39;m not saying "fighting terrorism and Saddam Hussein" is not a noble goal or anything....but it reminds me of the Filipino-American war in which the governemnt used "educating the Filipinos and helping them set up a good governemnt" as an excuse for maintainting U.S. military presence in that country. At the same time, the U.S. was killing rebellious Filipinos and dumping its surplus goods into that country and looking at more than 10,000 acres of virgin forest ripe for the U.S.&#39;s logging industry...

Oh the striking parallels -_-

[Mark]

Originally posted by Todd@Feb 4 2005, 01:26 AM
We shouldn&#39;t be babysitting the world.
I&#39;ve been saying that line forever. Well said.

[Jon[athan]]

Originally posted by Mark+Feb 4 2005, 03:08 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Mark @ Feb 4 2005, 03:08 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Todd@Feb 4 2005, 01:26 AM
We shouldn&#39;t be babysitting the world.
I&#39;ve been saying that line forever. Well said. [/b][/quote]
amen to that. sometimes it feels like Bush is paying to much attention to what is going on all over the world that he forgets about all the problems we have right here in the U.S.

and about the voting. i think its a good idea and all...but there arent enough ppl voting. and the process it takes to just cast one vote is crazy. i had a teacher explain to me all the things one person had to do to cast one vote and it was like a list of about 30 things/qualifications. if they are going to have a democracy then it needs to be refined...but i suppose some of that will happen over time.