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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (43683)	12/28/2005 11:23:14 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 90947

And here I was thinking the opening of the Afghani Parliament was glorious news. How naive of me. According to the Solons of the DNC/AP, the war in Afghanistan was just done for the benefit of warlords and drug dealers. And there is absolutely nothing good to come of elections and representative government. _______________________________________________________ fromm the DNC controlled Associated Press: Afghanistan’s Elected Parliament Convenes By ERIC TALMADGE Associated Press Writer Dec 19, 1:11 AM EST KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s first democratically elected parliament in more than three decades convened Monday, but there were concerns about whether it would be a constructive political force. More than half of the new lawmakers are regional strongmen, and fears are high that they will block efforts to reform government and bring to justice those responsible for years of bloodshed. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney flew in to attend the opening session, which began with a reading from the Koran. Afghanistan has had no elected national assembly since 1973, when coups and a Soviet invasion plunged the country into decades of chaos that left more than 1 million people dead. Civil war raged in the early 1990s, followed by the nightmarish rule of the Taliban. U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 after the regime refused to stop sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network in wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Afghans voted for the 249-seat lower house of parliament in September. They also elected provincial councils that then chose two-thirds of the 102-seat upper chamber. President Hamid Karzai appointed the remaining 34. The composition of the National Assembly is an eclectic mix of warlords, ethnic groups, rival factions and, for the first time, women. After Monday’s largely ceremonial opening session, security and stability were expected to be the major issues for the lawmakers in the weeks ahead. The exact length of the session hadn’t been determined, however. Though the inauguration of the assembly formally concludes the political transition process agreed on by Afghan factions under U.N. auspices in December 2001, the country continues to teeter on the verge of chaos. Some 20,000 U.S. troops are deployed here, along with thousands of mostly European peacekeepers. But violence is rife in the country’s south, where remnants of the Taliban are waging an insurgency marked by near daily killings and bombings. Just days before parliament was to open, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a car not far from the assembly building, slightly damaging a Norwegian peacekeeping vehicle. The country’s economy also continues to rely heavily on the trade in illicit drugs - a threat NATO’s top operational commander, U.S. Gen. James L. Jones, has suggested is more serious than the Taliban insurgency. Opium production has boomed since the fall of the Taliban and Afghanistan is now source of 80 percent of the world’s heroin. The makeup of the assembly itself has cast further doubt on whether it will be a positive political force. Among those in the parliament with bloody pasts are Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a powerful militia leader accused of war crimes by New York-based Human Rights Watch, and Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander who has since reconciled with the government. Another winner was the former Taliban leader who oversaw the destruction of two massive 1,500-year-old Buddha statues during the fundamentalists’ reign. "The international community will try to portray the opening of parliament as a triumph," said Sam Zia-Zarifi, Asia research director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "But many Afghans are worried about a parliament dominated by human rights abusers." One former militia commander who won election wasn’t at the opening session - he was shot dead earlier this month. Eight parliamentary candidates were killed in the runup to the September polls.