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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (92036)	12/26/2004 4:37:38 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

For all the repressiveness of his managerial style this should not be overlooked: "Under Saddam such fanatics were kept out since, for all his occasional nods towards Islam, he was essentially a secularist. (Michel Aflaq, founder of the Ba’ath party, was a Syrian Christian, and Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s deputy, is from Iraq’s small Christian minority.) But thanks to Donald Rumsfeld’s “army lite”, such groups have been able to enter Iraq through the porous Syrian border. Jihad, holy war, has come to Iraq. " I feel sorry for the people who supported this war. There is bad, and then there is worse. What we had with Saddam was bad, but I fear we will see worse.

To: Grainne who wrote (92036)	12/26/2004 5:01:18 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

It is really difficult for me to understand how the United States thinks it will be able to control the Iraqi election. Whatever happened to freedom on the march, anyway, bringing democracy to the Iraqis? Aren't free elections part of that? December 26, 2004 4:45 PM Iraq rejects U.S. election plans By Luke Baker BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's election body has rejected a suggestion in Washington it adjust the results of next month's vote to benefit the Sunni minority if low turnout in Sunni areas means Shi'ites win an exaggerated majority in the new assembly. Speaking of "unacceptable" interference, Electoral Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said on Sunday: "Who wins, wins. That is the way it is. That is the way it will be in the election." U.S. diplomats in Baghdad, at pains to keep their role in the election discreet, declined comment on a New York Times report from Washington which said Sunnis might be granted extra seats if the community's vote was judged to have been too low. U.S. officials have expressed concern that if the ballot on January 30 fails to reflect Iraq's sectarian and ethnic mix due to violence and boycotts in Sunni areas, then the assembly will lack legitimacy. But any attempt to fix the proportion of seats going to the main groups in advance could have the same effect. "The Americans are expressing their views and those aren't always the same as the Commission's," Ayar told Reuters. "But the Commission is absolutely independent. It is not acceptable for anyone to interfere in our business." Some leaders among Sunni Arabs, a 20-percent minority who dominated the country under Saddam Hussein and before, have called for the election to be put off because violence in the north and west will make it hard for Sunnis to vote. But Shi'ites, who account for 60 percent of the 26 million population, are keen to exercise their electoral weight. The New York Times said Shi'ite leaders had been approached about the idea. Shi'ites would be reluctant to see the minority shut out of power if that means more violence, like the twin suicide car bombs that rocked their holy cities a week ago. Next month's vote will elect 275 legislators who will appoint a president and government and oversee the drafting of a new constitution over the next year. Reuters swissinfo.org