As we get nearer and nearer to 2005, lots of skepticism has been raised concerning the "upcoming" elections in January. Iraqi leaders have been reported to be pushing for moving the elections off a few months or more, meanwhile Bush has mandated that Iraq will get it's chance to vote for it's leader.

1) What did you answer in the poll and why?

2) What would the results be for Bush if Iraq did not have an election in January?

3) For the Iraqi people?

4) Should elections go ahead, how democratically sound do you expect them to be?

Partial. I suspect the January ballot will go ahead, but there will be questions, deficiencies and problems.

Struggles between the Shia and non-Shia, already visible, will continue, visible or not.

The organization of the polling and the registration of voters, both already issues, will draw more controversy.

Outright practical difficulties - violence, sabotage, diversions - seem probable.


Bush has shown himself adroit at responding to untoward eventualities. This one wouldn't seem to offer any special challenges.


This one could be serious, and intentionally, of course.

Sowing FUD in the minds of the Iraqi citizen, particularly toward voting/democracy, is a primary goal of the resistance.


If they come off, the results should be generally acceptable. Outside Iraq, at least.

1) What did you answer in the poll and why?
I voted that there would be elections, but that the results would not be sound. Given the available options, this was closest to my view that I think that the turnout will be very low indeed, especially in areas where there is still lots of insurgent activity (anyone thinking this will be completely stopped by January is kidding themselves, IMO).

2) What would the results be for Bush if Iraq did not have an election in January?
Domestically, I think people will be quite charitable on Bush and will tend more to the view that events have conspired to postpone elections or devalue their quality than that the genie of chaos is now out of the bottle and it's mostly Bush's fault. Internationally, I would say that people will mostly take the opposite view.
So, not much is new there.

3) For the Iraqi people?
Another few months or years of the current, chaotic status quo. So, not much new there either.

4) Should elections go ahead, how democratically sound do you expect them to be?
There may be some electoral fraud around the edges, but I don't expect to see anything like the Saddam-era plebescites, or even the recent Ukranian fiddling (which, as an aside, I take to be a good thing, inasmuch as people power has prevailed over an obviously fraudulent result). However, I think that the turnout will be so low that whichever candidate(s) win power, they will have no mandate to do anything.

My greatest concern for fraud is not that extremists will cheat to get into power, but that "Coalition of the Willing" will cheat to keep them out of power. I don't for a second imagine that Moqtada al Sadr would either not command widespread electoral support, or be allowed to take up a position of formal power by the forces he's been fighting against.

I also think that the security situation, and the state of Iraqi security forces, are such that the coalition will be there in numbers much like today's levels for the foreseeable future, and I don't think that any government, however democratic, whose main legitimacy and mandate derives from foreign military power rather than popular electoral support can be called sound (or even very democratic).

Being a terminal optimist, I voted that yes, the vote will go on, and yes, it will be close enough to the real deal for now. I'm hoping that things stabalize enough in Iraq to allow a good portion of our troops to come home or be reassigned to less dangerous situations.

There is a part of me that doubts the elections will come off well. For now, that doubt is being suppressed.



A shoulder shrug off of a goal that wasn't reached, perhaps some reassignments in the upper ranks, give medals to those who tried hard. It doesn't matter to Bush any longer, since getting his second term. Republicans in general won't be happy with it, at least those looking for election wins in two years. That might put more pressure on Bush to serve up results, with the pressure coming from the Repub party leadership.



Again, hope over doubt. I'm hoping that having an election inspires the Iraqi people to embrace their country as now free (with the risks that come with freedom) and democratic, *and* heading toward peace.



As best as can be expected, which isn't very sound at all. Still, it will be a beginning. Not having elections will be failure, so I'll consider it a success when the elections happen.

Hopefully, the Iraqi and US publics will have learned some big lessons from this attempt to create democracy. In comparison to fighting war (depose Hussein, eliminate military power), creating democracy is a lot tougher. If this is to be repeated elsewhere, a whole lot more planning has to go on before taking action.

I voted 'no'.


I doubt there will be legitimate elections, seeing how it went in Afghanistan:

People were allowed to vote 'several' times, and did so after hearing that political parties would pay up to 150 dollars for a registration card, a huge sum of money in a country where many live on two dollars a day.

A survey of Afghani women found that 87 percent said they needed to ask their husbands’ permission to vote. And though many women were registered multiple times by their husbands so that their votes could be sold, the number of women registered for the election still only reached about 40 percent.


I suspect someting very similar happens in this election.

I also doubt the Iraqi people will know the difference between the parties (even the Western population have rather biased view on other parties than the most famous ones).

I've also read the list of the leading candidates, and they are either former political enemies of Saddam, former exiles, or people working with the pentagon and the CIA.


I do not believe for one second that the US government hope to create "democracy" in Iraq. Politics, as I see it, at least on a big level like this,is all about 'realpolitik'.

I don't believe the election to be legitimate at all, if the elections ever happens.




Media will probably call Iraq "undemocratic", and Bush will probably face some criticism, but overall I think things will not change very much if Iraq does not have an election. It will probably be explained with that the situation was "unfair", and because of security reasons it would not be a fair election.




Not much would change.




Not democratic at all. I see no reason why it is in the interest of the Iraqis to have a (from my point of view, a most likely) fake election.

1) What did you answer in the poll and why?

I voted that there will be elections, but they will not be sound. The Bush administration has staked too much on the elections not to have them take place. It would take a massive attack, like the insurgents occupying several cities, to prevent the elections from happening, and I don't think the insurgents have that ability.


2) What would the results be for Bush if Iraq did not have an election in January?

More criticism and more calls for Rumsfeld to resign. Of course Bush will just shrug it off and make some speech about freedom being prevented by the supporters of tyranny and evil. Then he'll bomb some things and everything will go on like before.

3) For the Iraqi people?

The same. Whether the election goes through or not the attacks and instability will continue, unless Sunni's fully participate, which is highly unlikely.

4) Should elections go ahead, how democratically sound do you expect them to be?

In a country that never has had an election, trying to hold one under foreign occupation, while armed insurgents terrorize the country, I don't think the prospects for a democratically sound election are very high. Everything will probably go well in the Kurdish areas and some of the Shiite zones, but the Sunni triangle is going to be a mess, along with Mosul and parts of Baghdad. There's also going to be foreign intervention with the US, Iran, and Syria all trying to push their favorites.

The distinction between real democracy (a social condition under which people have real influence on decisions that affect their lives) and mere electoral formality is elusive to Americans, who believe that the sun of political discourse rises and sets on the narrow field of issues considered in their "free" press and in their Congress. The coming elections in Iraq will not satisfy even the minimum standards of electoral formality, but if they did, it would still not convince many Iraqis, or other people in the world, that these elections were a step toward real democracy. Yet U.S. proceeds as if a veil democratic formalism, even if woven only partially, will cover up the iron fist of U.S. military occupation and oppression.

The attempt of the U.S. government to dictate the future of Iraq, and through it that of the Middle East, has already been defeated, and many Americans realize this. It is only a matter of time until they all do.

1) What did you answer in the poll and why?

I answered C because the Sunni's have decided to boycott the elections.
Any democratic election must be representative of the nation as a whole, so if the elections proceed, it cannot be a true indication of what the people of Iraq want.

2) What would the results be for Bush if Iraq did not have an election in January?

Well, since it is apparent, he cannot be shamed, I would say that it would only anger him and we would be subject to more of his ranting and raving about how the Iraqis are throwing away an opportunity to live as a free republic.
I seriously doubt he would just let it go.

3) For the Iraqi people?

The Iraqi people wouldn't really care one way or another. People who have lived under one type of government/Theocracy will not take kindly to being forced to live under another with one flip of the switch. Why rock the boat?

4) Should elections go ahead, how democratically sound do you expect them to be?

If holding these elections will get our troops home sooner, then, yes they should go ahead. It will be all for show anyway.......democracy will fail in Iraq.


[/quote]

Have to say this really caught my eye.

To suggest that Iraqis were satisfied with the system under Saddam or that they are not enthusiastic about the chance to participate in a democratic government is laughable at best.

I would suspect that most Iraqis, indeed most Sunnis and certainly most Shiites and Kurds would be deeply disappointed if the election were not to take place. All of Iraq's communities have sacrificed and suffered under the insurgency in order to rebuild their nation.

The same faulty logic could be applied to Afghanistan, but their elections turned out just fine (for a first time). The danger to democracy in Iraq is not the US military...

There were isolated problems but the consensus for international monitors (not from the US mind you, the UN organized the election) was a thumbs up for democratic effectiveness.

If Iraq goes as well as Afghanistan it would be an amazing success. Voter fraud is not the biggest danger, voter murder is much more likely to derail things...

"Sacrificed and suffered in order to rebuild their nation," indeed! Iraqis have not suffered for any purposes of their own, but because the only alternative was to die -- as approximately 100,000 of them have. Their destroyed nation was destroyed the United States, with its 10 years of draconian sanctions, and its invasion. And it continues to be destroyed every day by "regretably necessarily" and "precise" American firepower (look at Falujah). They know this, if you do not. I am sure that these people want once again to have control of their country. To assume that holding these elections will do anything to contribute to real power being returned to them, to weaken the insurgency, or to endear the U.S. to any segment of Iraqi society, is a very far reach.

The insurgency is not a band of criminals. Such effective guerilla forces can exist only if they have the support of a very wide swath of society. And the Shiites to which you point are no friends of the occupation, either. Only the Kurds are our friends, and they are only the friends of our power. At best, we are taking sides in a civil war.



It's continually amazing how many Americans equate electoral procedures with real democracy. "The elections turned out fine," and Voila! Freedom and happiness! In truth, the future of America in Afghanistan (albeit backed up by Nato forces), absent vast and currently unbudgeted investment in Afghani infrastructure, is not hopeful. It is unlikely even that the Taliban, whom our war only served to remove from power, will ever be defeated.

It's always a little humorous when somebody is diametrically opposed to the war in Iraq tries to paint the Saddam era as one of peace and tranquility, where the people had power. A land of milk and honey where Saddam didn't spend oil for food money on palaces and his army, and now good knows what else or who else......

And the over citing of one debunked Lancet article makes me have to break out the tin foil......

I've noticed that even many supporters of the war have some doubts about the election, but EVERYBODY who I've spoken to or read who is against the war.....tries to say only the most negative things about the election.

All well and good........but Vladimir when you opine for Iraqi's to 'once again have control of their country' you mean of course only the faci....I mean Ba'athist's right?

Enough of the country (meaning the vast majority of it) is stable enough to hold elections. Postponing them would'nt be the worst decision but cancelling them surely would.

... as detrimental to Iraqi infrastructure the military strikes have been, it pales in comparison to the ongoing campaign against stability currently waged by the insurgents. The purposefully target water, power, communication, and sanitation facilities. They threaten and murder Iraqi civilians, politicians, police officers etc.
It is for fear of the insurgents that Sunni political parties refuse to participate in the elections.

The net effect of coalition troops presence currently is for order and prosperity for the Iraqi people. The enemies of Iraq are those who decapitate innocent aid workers on video tape for daring to help rebuild.

...not so far at all. It is, after all, the same thing that works for a couple of billion people worldwide.
As hard as the insurgents try, the new Iraqi central government will consolidate its control of the country. In many areas it has already done so.
Power, therefore, will lie in the hands of those able to influence this government. The elections will place much of that power in the hands of the Iraqi people.

Representative democracy is not a perfect system but the US, France, Sweden, and Japan all seem to like it a lot.

.. an interesting theory but the obvious question is: How many is a "wide swath"? All evidence from polls, to interviews, to accounts on the ground point to the fact that the supporters on the murderous and brutal campaign of the insurgents to deter the Iraqi people from working to rebuild their nation are a tiny minority compared to the whole.

They are a band of criminals, and most Iraqis do know this, if you do not.

Proof counter to this notion is welcome.

The Taliban, after all its threats an posturing, couldn't even muster a major attack on election day (though it promised to do so). There are fast on the road to irrelevance seeing as they are widely unpopular. I agree the country needs aid but the situation is not a bleak as you seem to think it is.

While I don't discredit the fear of insurgents is one of the reasons that the Sunni parties refuse to participate, it's not the only one:
Demands of the Iraqi forces
This is a Lexis-Nexis transcript (so registration is needed) of a Dar al-Salam radio broadcast in Baghdad on 1100 gmt 25 Nov 04. (I'm new to this msg board so I'm not supposed to quote this big, let me know)

Basically they want the elections postponed until:



Those who signed this are:
The Iraqi Islamic Party, The Arab Democratic Front, Al-Juburi Tribal Council, The Reconciliation and Liberation List, The Centrist Current, The Independent Iraqi Front, The Iraqi National Movement and The National Front for the Iraqi Tribes.

So unless these demands are at least attempted, my answer to:
3) For the Iraqi people? would be, no way.



Assuming Iran, Syria, and the US keep there hands out this...will it even really be the majority? (See below for explanation)



Again, I'm sure that the insurgency is a minority. However, the words majority and minority as they apply to Iraq are very misleading. Their has not been a true census done for the Iraqi people so it is impossible to have accurate polls and quite frankly, an accurate election. Without a census and real voter registration (amoung other things!), 4) Should elections go ahead, how democratically sound do you expect them to be? I'm going go with not very sound at all. The need to be delayed.

They KILL; "murder" is value-laden and merely says, "I am for the occupation." Equating guerilla war with criminality does not change that it is war. Blood and iron, not pronouncements that one side is virtuous and the other evil, decide war.

"Pales in comparison?" You have no notion of the relative effect of the destructive power available to the two sides, or of how it is used. Go to Falujah.

What is that, a Pentagon press release? In just the same way, the Germans in Yugoslavia claimed that they were there for the benefit of the Yugoslav people.


Ah yes, "democracy" -- the great American religion. Sprinkle on a few electoral forms, with a liberal dose of single-bidder contracts for U.S. businesses and an open field for American capital (plus torture and death for dissenters, they way they did under American sponsorship in Argentina, Greece, Chile, Guatemala, etc., etc.), and everything gets better. Or at least, the American press reports that it does.

There is some real democracy in the world, but it is not something that can be imposed by force of arms. Iraq is not Sweden.


I am sure that the 90 Iraqi policemen and 10-15 Americans who died during the last week would strongly second your view, if they were they here to do so.

The elections will place some power in the hands of those whom the United States has permitted to participate in them, and especially those to whom its agents in Iraq give support; by and large these are emigree organizations (Iraqis like Alawi, who used to live in Detroit). To equate these elements with the Iraqi people is exceedingly naive.


America's enemies are always "murderous," of course. Americans, on the other hand, kill out of GOOD motives -- right?


Ho, hum. As I said, Iraq's future will be decided by blood and iron, not by rosy speculation and naive belief in Rose Garden press releases.

You find these pleasant fantasies comforting, by all means cling to them; most Americans do.

First, I am sorry for putting a little too much zing at the end of my reply to your post. I have removed it.

Second, I want to reply to a particular substantive point that I omitted to treat in my original reply:



What I have read about polls and interviews in Iraq is that they are untrustworthy because the respondents do not trust the people administering them.

But I think that the most striking evidence that the insurgency enjoys overwhelming support throughout Sunni Iraq is that when an American convoy is ambushed, people rush out and dance on the trucks; they hack at the wounded and dead soldiers and, in general, they rejoice. Also I have read that on these occasions, the Iraqis present say that they are quite proud of "their" fighters. This hardly convinces me that the insurgency is founded on a narrow political base, at least regionally. "Criminal" seems to be a characterization that is used exclusively by people who live in the Green Zone.

When the "battle for Falujah" was going on, there was an uprising in Mosul and they had to bring in Kurdish militia to try to deal with it.

In point of fact, it is true even in southern Iraq that people come out and make demonstrations of rejoicing when there has been some small, local American defeat. I expect that if an American battalion were wiped out, something far beyond the present capabilities of the insurgency, the rejoicing would be proportionately greater.

Then too there is that the insurgency always seems to have the number of the Iraqi security forces. It's widely acknowledged that these forces have been deeply penetrated by insurgent elements; nor is it the case that very many of these policemen and militiamen seem to be very strongly committed to what they are doing. This suggest to me that the Iraqis serving in the security forces are doing so for the money, not out of genuine desire to fight for the American cause -- "Iraqi cause," of course, to those who live in the Green Zone.

I noticed also that when some election workers were gunned down recently, their asailants did not even bother to wear masks. This suggests that they are very confident of not being turned in by the people who know them. This again fails to support the notion that the insurgency is a narrow, "criminal" element.

Then, leaving aside the Sunni insurgency, we have Sadr's forces, who are hardly the friends of the occupation.

So I think it is rather clear, actually, that the occupation faces wide-based insurgency that is either violent or violent in immediate potential.

I am not suggesting that the Iraqis were satisfied with the system under Saddam.
I was suggesting that they were satisfied with living under a Theocratic type of government; a type of government that all Arab nations have.

What Saddam did with his position is another story; he abused his power for years.

I did not mean to post something humorous. I was being serious.

edited to clean quotations up a bit.

I am puzzled by your lengthy quotation of me (which I have not included in my quotation) along with the absence in your post of any argument engaging my quoted words, or at least, any such argument that I could detect.

But contrary to one of your assertions, I expect that there will be found many people who doubt the wisdom of the war but who nevertheless think, mistakenly as I would argue, that the elections are somehow constructive. To please such people and provide a fig-leaf for American power in Iraq is one of the main reasons the elections are being held, of course.

Now as to Saddam Hussein, it is always a little humorous when someone in favor of the war points to his dictatorial regime as sufficient justification for a military invasion that has resulted, so far, in the deaths of something like 100,000 Iraqis.

In the first place, there are many governments in the world less perfect than others from the viewpoint of this or that political value. But no degree of alleged imperfection, before this, was ever recognized as sufficient ground for launching an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation (at any rate outside the Carribean where, I admit, the United States has a longstanding tradition of invading weak nations on the pretext of improving their governments). It is particularly noteworthy that the international community, excepting those countries quite strongly dependent on the United States, rejected U.S. war justifications.

Second, only in America is it imagined that a dictatorship is necessarily a place where everyone but a few cronies long for the overthrow of the regime. On the contrary, it is quite possible that wide segments of society support and enjoy the benefits of a government that utterly lacks electoral and constitutional niceties. It is clear in retrospect that Iraq was one such country. But of course, this caught the Americans, who expected their battalions to be greeted by flower-tossing maidens, by surprise.

The Iraqi people, unless you count the ones living in Detroit and San Diego, did not ask for the invasion. Undoubtedly many of them detested their government, but they themselves had not, and have not, decided that the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis and the flattening of Iraq's infrastructure was a suitable price to pay for removing it.

After the elections there will be a U.S. puppet regime with somewhat more legitimacy that the current U.S. puppet regime. That is some small progress, I admit, toward the program of U.S. political domination of Iraq and continued military lodgement there -- which was the real reason for the invasion. But I think, for reasons that I have argued elsewhere, that that program itself is doomed to failure.

Well Vlad, let's take a look at your words that I quoted and see if there really is something worth arguing........


You didn't really bring much to bear for debate, other than your disdain for elections and a laughable Lancet study, that has not only been debunked, but unanswered by you. The 100,000 civilian deaths is merely another tired catch phrase heralded by the anti-Iraq war folks to flesh out their argument.


Have I really posted anywhere that I was in favor of the war? Or are you just assuming that I do because I don't agree with your assertions? At the outset, I did agree with the war, as we had every legal right to take action in answer to the 12 years of repeated violations of the 1991 cease-fire. But now I believe we should have at least waited until Afghanistan was well in hand. So please don't paint me into what you think I am without some sort of evidence. And again with the 100,000 deaths.......

When the elections take place, there will surely be more growing pains. This is a nation that has lived under a totalitarian regime for three decades. There is no switch to flip to immediately emancipate millions of people painlessly. Maybe general elections and a unified Iraq isn't the best course of action....but it's a hard sell to me to imply that they will really be any worse off than they were under Saddam.......with the notable exception of the 'insurgents' who seemingly have no regard for their fellow countrymen, in the hopes of restoring the previously mentioned regime.

I voted yes as it is my firm belief the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want to have a free government of their own. The Shia and Kurds are not the problem. It is the Sunni minority that will be the trouble. De Toqueville warned of a "tyranny of the majority" when it came to American democracy. However, with this new democracy there are different criteria as to how we should view its success.

As I do not view the Sunni collaborators with the insurgency as legitimate to the success of popular rule, I voted yes because the Shia majority and Kurd minority are what matter to Iraq now. If the Sunni recognize this new authority then they should be welcomed. If not, then they are a roadblock to be removed, nothing more. I do not expect this ideal situation to emerge as the Sunni were the beneficiaries of dictatorship prior to the war.

The results for Bush will be mixed...or rather, it'll be the same mix we've seen with every milestone that we've had in Iraq. Those who recognize the historical signifigance of having a free Iraq will welcome it accordingly. Those who cannot grow beyond their kneejerk condemnation will condemn the elections, even if they're bloodless.

For the Iraqi people...? Well, that depends upon how you define their "people"? Are they really "Iraqi" or are they religious sects, carved out into a nation by the British in the 20th century? I fully expect the Left to maintain their dim view of majority's progress as it runs counter to any utopian view of what democracy should be in terms of equal representation. By now, we should realize that a large contingent of Sunnis will turn away from the electoral process, which is a true shame beacuse for the most part the Sunnis are educated and represent (or represented) a great part of the Iraqi cultural elite. But that does not mean we should deny freedom to the majority.

As for the soundness of the election, I fully expect the election to be beset by the typical problems of any fledgling democracy in over 80% of the country (that is outside the Sunni Triangle). Inside the Sunni Triangle will be a different story, should an election be held at all. I expect insurgents to produce the same bloodshed that has cost Iraqi suffering for some time. Only when the Sunni accept their status as a minority with fair and equal rights will they truly be a part of the new Iraq. We cannot delay progress because they are stubborn and greedy for a time that has passed them.

Those condemning the elections are not doing so because we don't want elections in Iraq. We want them done right. Like it or not we're in this war, we made progress, and took some heavy losses in the process. (My opinion here) Why throw it all away by doing a perfunctory job with the elections? How many of the wishes of the Iraqi people listed (see my previous post) will or have been met? (E wont for sure unless we delay.)




What's the point of the little history lesson, I'm lost? If we use your definition for defining Iraq, then what are the people of Israel?



Obviously equal representation is going to be impossible for this election, their are always problems, even in countries that have been doing this for about 200 years and have peace in the homeland. However, I think you need to set some sort of minimum criteria like a true census and voter registration and a reasonable amount of safety for all of those who wish to participate. (sorry to keep repeating my above post but these things are often dismissed)




See my post above for a more precise reason we need to delay and why the Sunni's don't wish to participate. These are their words, not some reason I assume or made up. Furthermore, how is an erroneous election progress? You have to do it right if you want it to be progress.

To my knowledge, the study did not estimate only civilian deaths, but total deaths. If someone other than Bill O'Reilly has debunked this, published as it is in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, I would appreciate hearing the arguments. My understanding is that the study gives a responsible and unbiased estimate.

But if, for the sake of argument, only 33,000 and not 100,000 Iraqis have died, is the difference consequential to our discussion? That would be ten times the number that died in the two towers, which in the muddled minds of so many Americans, is the ultimate justification for all this.


I can only say that my assumption that you are fundamentally a war supporter appears to be correct. It hardly constitutes war opposition to say that the war should have begun later, on more favorable military terms!

Everything in your first post, and everything in your second, gives ample evidence that you accept the key arguments that the U.S. government has used to justify its invasion of Iraq and its continued occupation. Even now you condemn "the anti-war folks." I don't think I leaped to any impermissible conclusions.

What I think I bring to bear in this particular thread is a willingness to challenge the comfortable notion that the purposes of the U.S. invasion of Iraq are generous ones, or that the U.S. is genuinely concerned with the welfare of the Iraqi people. I present an analysis which explains events within an entirely different set of assumptions. I do not "disdain the elections," I merely say that their purpose is to provide a fig-leaf to American domination of Iraq. I maintain that the "government" of Iraq is before the elections, and will be after them, a U.S. puppet. I say that the purposes of the U.S. conquest of Iraq are to determine the future government of that country and to set up a permanent military lodgement there with which to intimidate such countries as Syria and Iran. Certainly these purposes include getting control of -- not necessarily ownership of, but a big share of the profits of -- Iraqi oil. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is, plain and simple, an imperialist excursion. I further argue that very many people in Iraq and throughout the world share this view. You may disagree, but I don't think I am saying nothing -- particular since so many of the other people who post here appear to accept the assumptions that I am challenging.

First, the study forementioned was taken by using INTERVIEWS. There were no DNA, no bodies counted or anything like that. I believe the study estimated anywhere from 8,000-100,000.

Secondly, it has a huge difference in the argument because nobody truly knows how many civilians have died. For all we know it could be far less than anyone estimates. Saddam Hussein killed hundreds of thousands every year with his secret police.



Again with the imperialism. How can the United States be imperialist when they have given everything they have ever taken back to its original owners? (Cuba, France, Germany, Phillipines, Afghanistan, Iraq)

Furthermore, the elections are for the self-determination of Iraq. The troops want to leave...the military wants to get them out of there as quickly as possible and allow Iraq to rule itself. Nobody will stand for "domination" of Iraq. In the short term, if the military sets up a base, its purpose would be to prevent Syria or Iran from taking advatange of a young and fragile Iraq...not the opposite way around.

It makes a difference to me. I haven't tried to paint the Iraq war in a particular light concerning the number of casualties or atrocities, you have. And repeatedly with the 100,000 number. And since you asked:

IBC
IraqBodyCount is hardly Bill O'Reilly. I find it strange that you would even bring his name into the discussion.


If realizing that force is often necessary in the world of reality, then I guess I am a fundamental war supporter. Whatever makes you happy.......
If anti-Iraq war folks could more often than not debate the issues without regurgitating talking points like Pravda, I wouldn't be so quick to condemn them. And before you make a broad based assumption of me again...please know that I am in no way a cheerleader for GWB or his administration.



I could almost find myself agreeing with you, but your analysis is a bit vague for me to latch onto. The governing body has been and will be seen by most as (and I love this propagandistic word) puppet. But you would certainly have to agree that simply turning over the keys and letting the three factions chart their own course would lead to certain and quick civil war. Despite objections as to why we went into Iraq, the past cannot be changed. What remains now is to provide the best course of action for the Iraqi people.
We have in Iraq a people who have never tasted free and open elections. They lack a recent census and the necessary infrastructure for campaigning and the electoral process. But I, possibly unlike you, think that the Iraqi people want democratic elections. You cite a return of the country to the control of the people.......the Iraqi people have never had control of their country! You don't simply flip a switch or pull a lever and emancipate the masses. And no amount of revolutionary buzz words can change that.

I don't buy into your assertion that we wish to make permanent bases in Iraq to intimidate Syria and Iran. We have semi-permanent positions in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Afghanistan and Dubai. I hardly think Iraq provides much more than we really need. Nor have I seen any credible evidence that points to this conclusion.

I doubt that the 100,000 reported deaths is an UPPER confidence limit. Generally, studies that employ statistical estimation report EXPECTED, or mean, values and give upper and lower limits at given levels of confidence. If the upper and lower confidence limits were 8 and 100 thousand, I would have expected a number somewhere between those to have hit the press. However, I have not read the study.

I think that as a non-expert in combat-related mortality I am on reasonably solid ground when I trust numbers cited in respected scientific journals. I believe the editors of Lancet, and the authors of the study themselves, concede that there is a very high degree of uncertainty in these estimates. But I am an expert in statistics, and I can assure you that to say that an estimate is highly uncertain is not to say that it is biased; nor to say that it contributes no information.


I respectfully doubt that the Ba'athist regime killed "hundreds of thousands" every year; Iraq is, or was before we invaded it, a nation of 26 million people. It strains credulity that the regime could have remained in power had it embarked upon that much killing. Even dictatorships require substantial popular support. Further, killing on that scale really does require an industrial death aparatus, like that set up by the Germans in 1944-45. There have been no reports of such in Iraq. Given that it is not necessary to kill very many people when they are sure that they will die if they misbehave, I would not think it entirely unlikely that the Ba'athist regime killed a couple of thousand persons every year. Maybe someone here has some responsible estimates? I imagine that the governments of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, which unlike the former Ba'athist regime are fighting against very active insurgencies, kill a much larger proportion of their own people on an annual basis.

It is ridiculous how a Hitler-substitute is always puffed up to justify American aggression; Manuel Noriega, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and so forth; it is even more ridiculous that so many Americans swallow it, and eventually come to believe all sorts of fantastic exaggerations concerning the demon that their propaganda apparatus has created. A bad man is not the same a Devil on Earth who must be rooted out by war.

Of course Saddam Hussein was a dictator; as I have argued, that is a very weak argument for war. Of course the number of Iraqi war deaths is important; but whether it is 30,000 or 100,000 or 170,000 is of scant importance to the rhetorical defense of the war. By any reasonable estiimate, these deaths have been vastly, many orders of magnitude, greater than any level of death the United States would have been able to accept to bring about its goals in Iraq. That statement is even more true if we imagine the United States suffering a similar relative population loss. What is the U.S. population, 260 million? That would be 10 times the population of Iraq. Americans, who wrang their hands over 3,000 dead in the twin towers and shivver at the thought of 1,000 U.S. war dead, would consider it a disaster beyond measure if the U.S. were to lose 100,000 souls in war. Yet even if only 10,000 Iraqis have been killed in this war -- and it is fair to say that most responsible persons would regard that as a very low estimate -- the U.S. has already inflicted upon Iraq an equivalent disaster. And that leaves aside all of the physical destruction.

It is also quite interesting that U.S. is doing nothing to count the Iraqis that it has killed, and is continuing to kill. Naturally, given that those responsible for the government of Iraq are doing nothing to facilitate it, it is very difficult to develop a reliable estiimate of the number of Iraqis killed. Ironically, a meticulous count is kept of the tiny number of American troops who die (though the number of wounded is, I believe, suppressed).




France and Germany are rather special cases, because the vitality of these countries was highly critical for the waging of the Cold War. They could hardly have been resuscitated as economic vassals. But Cuba, the Phillipines, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, name any other nations that you like where the U.S. has controlled the formation of government, and it was always done for U.S. economic and military gain. Most historians do characterize U.S. rule in the Phillipines, China and Cuba as "imperialist;" that's what Teddy Roosevelt was all about. Afghanistan and Iraq? Well, the single-bidder contracts are already being let out, aren't they? And we did, among all of Iraq's governing institutions destroyed in our conquest, save only the Oil Ministry, right?

This is all widely recognized in the affected countries and throughout the world. Only in America, and among some right-wing Europeans, does the myth of the America's benignity persist. The Germans believed, you know, that their occupation of Europe was for Europe's good.


Oh yes, and when the Soviets set up military bases in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, this was to prevent the West from taking advantage of these young and fragile socialist democracies. Right?

Concerning the number and significance of the Iraqi war dead, please see my reply to lederuvdapac, above.


Glad to hear it!



For humanity's sake, something needs to be done, but it should omit the United States. I would be conviced that the invasion of Iraq were not an imperialist escapade if:

the elections planned under U.S. military aegis were cancelled;

the United States announced that it were withdrawing all its forces within three months, and invited U.N. peacekeepers to replace them (I would accept small U.S. military participation if it were under U.N. command);

the U.S. paid most of the cost of the peacekeeping effort;

the government of Iraq were subordinated, on an interim basis, to a U.N. authority;

the U.S. made subustantial, on the order of $400+ billion, payments in war reparations;

the U.S. embassy in Iraq were reduced to a staff of no more than 200 (it presently numbers over 4,000).

If for some reason the U.N. would not take up this burden, then I would say that a period of civil war in Iraq would be less costly to the people of that country than continued American attempts to pacify it. The U.S. must inevitably admit defeat and withdraw; and if the U.N. does not step in then, there will be eventual civil war anyway.

Concerning the purpose of continued U.S. military occupation of Iraq, one only has to read some of the orgininal, internal arguments in favor of war, prominent among which, I understand, was to set up a presence right across the borders of Syria and Iraq.

Ok, if a UN type mandate is what is best for Iraq (and I'm not convinced it is) then where are they??
You realize the Jan 30 elections are for the transitional government correct? Permanent elections are being planned for the end of the year. I have seen no evidence that spells out any US involvement for those elections, and I see nothing wrong with our assistance during the 30 Jan event.

I have often and loudly called for international peacekeepers to come into Iraq, preferably from moderate arab countries, but I in no way endorse US troops under UN command.

Where exactly does the $400 billion figure come from? And of course, the $$$ we've already spent on infrastructure would be deducted from that right?

What is the difference in numbers of embassy staff?? The CIA is going to have it's 'cultural attache's' in place no matter how many work there.

I find it odd that you think the insurgents who kill scores of their own people will suddenly stop if the UN came onto the scene. These are clearly thugs who wish only to regain the totalitarian power of the Ba'athist regime. What power of persuasion does the UN possess that will make people turn swords into ploughshares, or RPG's into bottle rockets in this case.


Well, I've searched through the Iraq War Resolution and the documents available on the PNAC website, and I've found nothing to indicate that. So I would be interested in what person or group advocated this reason for invading Iraq. If it turns out that evidence of this is not found, I'd say it knocks a bit of the fire out of the 'imperialism' vein.

Concerning the 100,000 dead....people who argue against the war don't ever try and split the difference or maintain an air of objectivity....they inject it as hyperbole, yet become incensed when their opposition does the same. That's why I have a problem with the continual use of it, I have never tried to defend our presence in Iraq with the lowballing of numbers of civilian dead.

To my understanding, the only basis upon which the U.S. invited them in was on the basis that the U.S. (O.K., the "Governing Authority" or whatever it calls itself) continued to govern Iraq. Nobody in the international community wants to shoulder such a difficult burden when the outcome is that the U.S. will continue to dominate the future of Iraq. The feeling is, I believe, "You started this, you finish it." That would change quite a bit, I think, if the U.S. announced its plans for immediate, absolute withdrawal.

The $400+ billion figure was just meant to be indicative of the order of magnitude that would be required to do meaningful reconstruction. Experts could debate it, I'm sure, and come up with a better number. My point is, the U.S. did all this damage, and the U.S. must pay for it.


I do. My point is, it is all a sham. I would only believe that any possible transition to Iraqi rule were not a sham if it took place under U.N. and not U.S. aegis.


The embassy won't require 4,000 people if it doen't plan to be the de facto government of Iraq. Nor will it be able to govern Iraq with only 200.

But my plan is pie in the sky; it won't happen, because the U.S. wants to keep a very firm grip on Iraq. The only purpose of my plan is to show that a viable transition to Iraqi rule exists without continued U.S. occupation.



I don't. But I think that these "fascists," "thugs," "murderers," or whatever demonic characterization you choose, have a substantial popular constituency and deserve a place at the table and a voice in the future of Iraq. I think that the U.N., better than the U.S., which has sworn to destroy them, will be able to offer them that.

I admit that my plan does not remove the problem of militant Islam in Iraq's future, but that is an issue that goes way beyond the boundaries of this discussion.

I find myself oddly agreeing and disagreeing with points made by both DT and Vladimir. I agree that US troop presence is likely exacerbating the insurgency issue; I disagree that any other force (national or international) would create a different outcome. I agree that elections in Iraq are an important step towards establishing democracy in Iraq; I disagree that elections will generate stability or move Iraq towards establishing a legitimate/effective civil authority. I agree that the US employs propaganda as a rhetorical technique to justify its aggression; I disagree that this is necessarily a bad thing™. I agree that the number of "collateral" civilian casualties post-invasion Iraq is in excess of anything under Saddam's regime; I disagree that this somehow puts Saddam and the US on morally equivalent grounds. I agree that one could draw parallels between Nazi Germany's occupation of Yugoslavia and the US occupation of Iraq; I disagree that this is a useful or enlightening comparison. I agree that the invasion of Iraq had insufficient justification; I disagree that accepting (or acknowledging) this means that the occupation of Iraq would be unjustified as well.

That would be a false conclusion for a couple of reasons.
1. I know it may sound like a technicality, but I'll say it anyway. The "occupation" of Iraq ended months ago with the dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). This has been legally recognized in UN resolutions.

2. Murder is not a subjective term, the killing of aid workers like Magaret Hassan, the execution of civilian workers and attacks on Shia religious leaders and festivals which have killed dozens of non-combatants purposefully are murder.

I see I wasn't clear and I'll attempt to clarify. I am well aware that if one were to count the immediate damage to infrastructure, the US military outbombed the insurgency hands down. What I meant by "pales in comparison" is an estimation of the long-term harm to Iraqi society caused by the attacks.

Is is here that the insurgents do their damage.

Homes can be rebuilt, cities repopulated, but only with the help of the economic, political, civic, and social resources that the insurgency targets.

If you have evidence of a concerted "American Press" effort to make Iraq look like a success, I'd love to see it. I find it hard to believe, considering the vast majority of headlines from the major American media sources are all bad.

Simply an unbacked conspiracy theory...


..of course democracy cannot be imposed and that is certainly not what the US is attempting in Iraq. The majority of Iraqis are in favor of some form of democracy, so there is no imposition. The "force of arms" is merely used to attempt to give space for Iraqis to form their own democracy.

That is out of 127,000 trained Iraqi security personnel and about 150,000 US troops not even counting additional coalition troops. The attacks are deadly, but not deadly enough for the insurgents to achieve their ends.

The US does not control who participates in the elections. If they did they probably would have a problem with the current list backed by Shia leaders, which includes significant portions of Sadr affiliates. The Iraqi people, will choose who the back and the power will belong to them (at least as much as it does in any democracy).


I not sure where you read this, and would love to know. But the polls I have read from Gallup and Oxford Research International where conducted using Iraqi interviewers trained by the sponsor organization. I see no great reason to doubt their accuracy.



In a country of millions, a narrow element can be hundreds of thousands. That enough fore some significant face time on television, but not enough to win. Most Iraqis reject the violence (something they have suffered through most of their lives) and merely want a stable, fair government for their country. Something which the insurgents don't even claim to offer.



Not all really. Some are military dictatorships (like Syria) and some are monarchies (like Kuwait and Bahrain). But I digress...

More to the point, Iraq has never been a theocracy, before Saddam was a brief military dictatorship and before that a monarchy. So to say iraqi were comfortable with a system they never experienced makes no sense.

Somehow I could not get "quote" to work, so I will just use bold, sorry.


Murder is not a subjective term..,


Oh, indeed?


If you have evidence of a concerted "American Press" effort to make Iraq look like a success, I'd love to see it. I find it hard to believe, considering the vast majority of headlines from the major American media sources are all bad.

Yes, and given the content of the news, I can only marvel at your assertion that the insurgency is narrow, lacks support, and that better things are just around the corner. I really think your interpretation of events is very substantial variance the news reports.


Simply an unbacked conspiracy theory...


The radical critique (I would say Marxian critique but many prominent critics would not accept that term) of the "free" press and the "free" academy in bourgeois-liberal societies is not that there is a conspiracy, but that there is a system of incentives that rewards "responsible" behavior and punishes "irresponsible." The claim is not that facts are not usually reported correctly, but that the interpretation of events is confined to a relatively narrow range of ideas tolerable to the ruling elites. I would refer you to the works of Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, which he wrote with E.S. Herman, being one of his early treatments of this topic. There is a kind of meta-analysis in the young Marx, not very cogently expressed, however. But I would recommend some latter-day interpreters, like Maurice Cornforth or even C. Wright Mills.

The theory can explain, for example, why so many Americans believe in the good intentions of the U.S. invasion, and very few Europeans do. The processes at work in the formation of socially perceived truth are the structurally similar on both continents, but European elites have no stake in the matter (or even, would benefit from U.S. defeat), and hence there is no disincentive to saying in "responsible" journals, on television, and so forth that the U.S. is out for its own good and no one else's.

Conspiracy is not the only alternative to the notion that things to not work as proposed in the Lockean model.


The US does not control who participates in the elections.

Indeed? And, I suppose, neither does it give surruptitiously aid to some parties and surruptiotious opposition to others? I speculate, I admit, but I would be astounded if this were not happening.
I not sure where you read this, and would love to know. But the polls I have read from Gallup and Oxford Research International where conducted using Iraqi interviewers trained by the sponsor organization. I see no great reason to doubt their accuracy.

I can't cite specific dates and articles but, my principal source of news being the New York Times, I recall reading several reports, usually given in the context of a reported news story, that Iraqis are extremely guarded in their interchanges with reporters and researchers. But simply given the overall picture from Iraq, I am amazed that anyone would propose that Gallup could go into Baghdad and produce a very meaningful estimate of the attitudes of the population there. Baghdad is not Iowa City.


In a country of millions, a narrow element can be hundreds of thousands.

This is scarcely a rejoinder to what I wrote, which was that widespread public rejoicing does not greet the successes of a narrow, criminal element.

That enough fore some significant face time on television, but not enough to win.

From what I read, U.S. military and civilian leaders regard the insurgency as a vastly greater threat than you do.

Most Iraqis reject the violence (something they have suffered through most of their lives) and merely want a stable, fair government for their country. Something which the insurgents don't even claim to offer.

"Stable" and "fair" are highly subjective terms. I am sure that the insurgents believe that they fighting for a future Iraq will be both stable and fair.

Yes, murder is the unlawful killing of a human being by another. There is debate about whether the war is unlawful, but the bombing of religious festivals and decapitation of aid workers and journalists requires no debate.

I wouldn't say better things are just around the corner, but I do believe that the insurgency is a small minority. I don't see how this conflicts with news reports. A well armed unscrupulous minority could easily cause these types of headlines.

That is not born out by the facts. Although the slant of the stories may be different, the substance of reports on the war are largely the same in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. I get most of my reporting from the internet and I see no evidence of a sytem at work to reshape perception of events. Again, evidence is what is required.

...but it is still pure speculation. The political dynamic in Iraq is from all reports being set up form with through alliances of political parties present before the war as certain religious leaders. This is not America's show.

I have no reason to believe that Gallup and Oxford don't know what they are doing. They have plenty of practice conducting polls and both claimed to meet scientific polling standard. Baghdad may not be Iowa City, but that doesn't mean people can't answer a questionnaire.

Without the insurgents publishing these demands, there is no way of knowing. Personally I suspect they have no real plan for Iraq other than their permanent domination by force.

For the sake of everyone else here, I will forbear further discussion with you about Iraq. We have degenerated into repetition. The future will reveal which set of predicitons is borne out in Iraq.

But concerning the quoted point and the radical critique of how ideology is formed in bourgeois-liberal societies, you really need to educate yourself more fully. If you understood the critique, you would better be able to evaluate the evidence for and against it. The claim is not that the facts are reported falsely (though it happens that they sometimes are), the but that the interpretation, including not only what you call the "slant," but even what is considered worthy of reportage or discussion, is the outcome of a set of powerful structural incentives. These incentives reward "responsible" reporting, teaching and theorizing, and discourage "irresponsible." This results in a rather strict limitation of the bounds within which popular perception, academic discourse, and political discussion occur. In general, within these ideological bounds there is "freedom," but for those who transgress, there is great risk -- not of imprisonment, but of marginalization and career destruction.

You ask for evidence, but I can hardly take responsibility for your education. Read Chomsky and some of his supporters. When you have, come back and we'll discuss it in a different thread.

I appreciate your thoughts on these and other points. However, I am sorry if I've given the impression of criticizing the invasion and occupation on moral grounds. Only in America is it widely imagined that war and morality have anything to do with each other, or that war is somehow not really war if it is sufficiently righteous.

Regardless of its morality or its justification, the practical consequence of American success in Iraq will be a great expansion of U.S. power in the Middle East and the enrollment of Iraq as a kind of economic and political client of the U.S.. I don't know what characterizes "imperialism" better than such circumstances brought about by military aggression, however justified. Also regardless of these things, the occupation is doomed to defeat, for the reason that infantry and armor, however backed up by helicopters, robot aircraft and satellite-guided bombs, are very poor implements for the oppression of a people by a foreign power. Between Iraq and Yugoslavia, purposes and means have been similar, the resistances have been similar, and I expect the outcomes will be also. Regardless of their degree of evil, I expect that the political forces behind the insurgency will eventually become the dominant political elements within Iraq -- as happened with the Yugoslav insurgency. So to me, the comparision with the Balkans seems both useful and enlightening.

I think that you may be right about this needing another topic, but I would remind you that this is a debate site. It is best that the person who makes an assertion be the one to provide evidence to back it. "Go read a book" can hardly be called a convincing argument.

Indeed, your whole argument on this point seems a bit self-contradictory.

On the one hand you admit that most of the news reports out of Iraq are bad, on the other hand you claim that a system has been successfully set up to encourage reporters to write within certain ideological bounds which are favorable to the administration of the issue.

It hardly seems a success to me.

I hardly think Just War Theory is a concept confined to the US.

World war 2 throws your entire theory out of whack. To say that war is never justified is ludicrous.



? 14/18 provnices in Iraq are perfectly safe and ready for elections. It is just those 4 in the Sunni Triangle that are giving problems. And the insurgency is hardly just Iraqi. Atleast 1/3 have come from Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in order to fight the Americans. This is part of war on terror now. Zarqawi is a part of Al queda and is committing attacks in Iraq against Iraqis. How difficult is this for people to understand? Al Queda attacked US on 9/11. After that day we made a pledge to NOT allow threats to develop and take preemptive action if necessary. We did it in Iraq and took out a tyrannical dictator. Now we are fighting TERRORISTS...not "freedom-fighters." In fact the very notion that the insurgents are "freedom-fighters" is unsustainable. We are giving the country democracy and the chance for true prosperity. Blowing up Iraqi police stations and government buildings is NOT the act of one who is oppressed but a terrorist.

To me this holds no water. If we were going to take preemptive action against the true threat, wouldn't we have attacked the Saudis? I fail to see a substantial link between Iraq and 9-11 (and I've looked). The neocons in office used 9-11 and the media to finally justify a invasion of Iraq. (watch Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire or I can try and give a synopsis, however it's a very in-depth topic)

Never said there was a significant link between Iraq and 9-11. The point is that potential threats have to be dealt with when we have the opportunity and NOT after thousands of our citizens are needlessly murdered.

Ok but a majority of the hijackers were Saudis, so wouldn't that make the Saudi's a greater threat? The same reason for invading Iraq (which ever Bush may choose today) can probably be applied to Saudi Arabia and their was a much greater connection between the Saudi's and 9-11.