B: 4 mio exiles eligiblae? I’ve heard the 4 mio figure but assumed it was the total expat population, so 2.5-3 mio voting may be more accurate. But if there were 4 mio eligible for voting, then the turnout is abysmal, close to 7%. There were a few less than 300.000 registered, and we could assume 10% didn’t show up, at least. The official word was that they were hoping for 1.2 mio registered expats – so even then the turnout was barely higher than 20%.
As I said before, probably at Steve Gilliard’s place, the length of the queue is just there to impress the journalist. It doesn’t mean anything as far as turnout is concerned. There are European countries where 60% of the people vote and you barely have any queue, and Black areas of Florida where you had to wait 4 hours to vote last Novembre – classical voter suppression trick – just because there weren’t enough ballot boxes.
If, as you said, Debka estimates 40-45%, I think it’s what I’ll take. I don’t really see what they would gain by coming up with fake figures, here.
Of course, 45% isn’t bad, really, but that’s not stellar and that’s far from what you usually have when a people has just been freed and can test newfound democracy; though quite often the hype goes down after a few years, and once they can see how it works and what it does, you quickly fall to 50% turnout (classic case being S Africa).
The moderate success – or rather the lower than normal turnout – is probably due to combination of Sunni massive boycott and security fears in most of the country.
Concerning the Sunnis, I think I heard that there were 1.500 ballots in Samarra (a stellar 2% turnout, basically). And probably even less in Fallujah, unless the Peshmergas accompanying the GIs could vote there.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 1 2005 21:29 utc | 4

@r`giap
if they dropped the lot from a helicopter far above the red sea – it would be no great loss
Helicopters use a great amount of gas …

Posted by: b | Feb 1 2005 21:51 utc | 6

Clueless,
In Sweden where about 80 % of the adults vote in the national elections I have never ended up in a queue with more then ten persons. Just to underscore your point. And the polls close around six (or maybe that is just when I think they close, I have never been to late anyway) and then the votes are counted by hand and reported by district, and it is all usually done by around midnight or 1 o´clock at night.
In the iraqi elections it will be interesting to see if Allawie gets suspiciusly many votes. Call me a cynic, but then I will probably yell “election fraud”. Again.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Feb 2 2005 2:33 utc | 8

And probably even less in Fallujah, unless the Peshmergas accompanying the GIs could vote there.
Hey there were lines in Fallujah, I saw it on CNN !(yeah, pershmerga)
In all seriousness, I await with dread the upcoming Harrison Ford movie on the battle of Fallujah. The lies will be thick. Part of me hopes that Iraq will be in such a state of insurrection that they won’t be able to lie.

Posted by: ben r | Feb 2 2005 5:54 utc | 10

Together again, Judith Miller and Ahmed Chalabi
And Judy says Ahmed was offered a cabinet seat in the new Iraqi government – the one that hasn’t even been elected let alone formed yet – by figures in the American administration.

Posted by: Al the jeerer (not laughing) | Feb 2 2005 11:56 utc | 12

Good piece, kat.

Posted by: beq | Feb 2 2005 16:37 utc | 14

funny….. we didn’t see the lines in Ohio…did we?

Posted by: beq | Feb 2 2005 17:34 utc | 16

Part of the registering of Iraqi expat voters was done here, in a drafty hall just down the road.
It was a disaster, reported in several local news articles. The effort apparently broke down, or was closed down, given up.
Many of the hired could not hande the Iraqi names (Arab speakers from Africa, etc.); the input information was garbled and insufficient (but workers had a quota to enter each day!)
The employees complained to the press (this is standard here), and as so many work laws were broken it was an interesting case that attracted attention, from the Unions, etc. Pay was too low; room was too cold; dress was too regulated (jackets, hats, boots, extra socks, etc. were forbidden); security was intrusive (people had to strip, that is down to underwear, searches were frequent); it was forbidden to go outside; it was forbidden to bring food or to eat, but no meals were provided (a fly-by-night company sold sandwiches at ten dollars each; these could be consumed under guard in a special spot); hours were too long; there were arms (guns) in the work place.
Toilet trips were very limited -not on demand! – and ‘surveilled’. More than half the employees were women, as they had the required language skills — many (as far as I could figure) were secular Muslims so the search – strip – toilet trip high-jinks were just unacceptable.
One young woman, interviewed by the paper, detailed her working day, what she earned, and what she had to spend to survive in the hall…she quit! As did many others…
The Iraqi community in Geneva is tiny. Those interviewed about their votes in this miraculous exercise in dumb-o-cracy pointed out that they couldn’t vote anyway.
Why this was such a f-up is mysterious. It was organised by The International Organization for Migration.
Numbers are uncertain and dodgy, article is a typical example of obfuscating journalism:
Nearly 94 percent of registered Iraqi expat voters cast absentee ballots in election, agency says
“….the number of expatriate Iraqis who registered in a special nine-day campaign represented only 23 percent of the estimated 1.2 million eligible.
“…. The agency said 265,148 Iraqi expatriate voters cast their ballots in special polls from Friday through Sunday. That was 93.6 percent of the 283,341 Iraqis outside the country who had registered, including 3,038 Iraqi police cadets training in Jordan, IOM said.
BostonCom
Other:
Link (Iran vote)
Couldn’t find a decent link.

Posted by: Blackie | Feb 2 2005 17:50 utc | 18

Morford on topic.

Posted by: beq | Feb 2 2005 19:27 utc | 20

What they are not telling you about the election
Key section of the article:
On Dec. 22, 2004, Iraqi Finance Minister Abdel Mahdi told a handful of reporters and industry insiders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that Iraq wants to issue a new oil law that would open Iraq’s national oil company to private foreign investment. As Mahdi explained: “So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.”
In other words, Mahdi is proposing to privatize Iraq’s oil and put it into American corporate hands.
According to the finance minister, foreigners would gain access both to “downstream” and “maybe even upstream” oil investment. This means foreigners can sell Iraqi oil and own it under the ground — the very thing for which many argue the U.S. went to war in the first place.
As Vice President Dick Cheney’s Defense Policy Guidance report explained back in 1992, “Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil.”
While few in the American media other than Emad Mckay of Inter Press Service reported on — or even attended — Mahdi’s press conference, the announcement was made with U.S. Undersecretary of State Alan Larson at Mahdi’s side. It was intended to send a message — but to whom?
It turns out that Abdel Mahdi is running in the Jan. 30 elections on the ticket of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIR), the leading Shiite political party. While announcing the selling-off of the resource which provides 95 percent of all Iraqi revenue may not garner Mahdi many Iraqi votes, but it will unquestionably win him tremendous support from the U.S. government and U.S. corporations.
Mahdi’s SCIR is far and away the front-runner in the upcoming elections, particularly as it becomes increasingly less possible for Sunnis to vote because the regions where they live are spiraling into deadly chaos.
(snip)
Thus, one might argue that the Bush administration has made a deal with the SCIR: Iraq’s oil for guaranteed political power. The Americans are able to put forward such a bargain because Bush still holds the strings in Iraq.
Regardless of what happens in the elections, for at least the next year during which the newly elected National Assembly writes a constitution and Iraqis vote for a new government, the Bush administration is going to control the largest pot of money available in Iraq (the $24 billion in U.S. taxpayer money allocated for the reconstruction), the largest military and the rules governing Iraq’s economy. Both the money and the rules will, in turn, be overseen by U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals who sit in every Iraqi ministry with five-year terms and sweeping authority over contracts and regulations. However, the one thing which the administration has not been unable to confer upon itself is guaranteed access to Iraqi oil — that is, until now.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Feb 2 2005 21:00 utc | 22

during which the newly elected National Assembly writes a constitution
I have seen this wrong in several sources in recent times. The National Assembly will oversee a council that will write the new constitution. The persons on that council will be vritical and their “advisers”. I bet you that Negroponte already has the complete list of both And the draft of that constitution.

Posted by: b | Feb 2 2005 21:47 utc | 24

a little letter from uncle noam
After the Election
The Future of Iraq and the US Occupation
By NOAM CHOMSKY
Editors’ Note: The following is an except from a presentation by Noam Chomsky on January 26th at a forum sponsored by the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, NM to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center (IRC), online at Chomsky is a member of the IRC’s board of directors. AC / JSC
Let’s just imagine what the policies might be of an independent Iraq, independent, sovereign Iraq, let’s say more or less democratic, what are the policies likely to be?
Well there’s going to be a Shiite majority, so they’ll have some significant influence over policy. The first thing they’ll do is reestablish relations with Iran. Now they don’t particularly like Iran, but they don’t want to go to war with them so they’ll move toward what was happening already even under Saddam, that is, restoring some sort of friendly relations with Iran.
That’s the last thing the United States wants. It has worked very hard to try to isolate Iran. The next thing that might happen is that a Shiite-controlled, more or less democratic Iraq might stir up feelings in the Shiite areas of Saudi Arabia, which happen to be right nearby and which happen to be where all the oil is. So you might find what in Washington must be the ultimate nightmare­a Shiite region which controls most of the world’s oil and is independent. Furthermore, it is very likely that an independent, sovereign Iraq would try to take its natural place as a leading state in the Arab world, maybe the leading state. And you know that’s something that goes back to biblical times.
What does that mean? Well it means rearming, first of all. They have to confront the regional enemy. Now the regional enemy, overpowering enemy, is Israel. They’re going to have to rearm to confront Israel­which means probably developing weapons of mass destruction, just as a deterrent. So here’s the picture of what they must be dreaming about in Washington­and probably 10 Downing street in London­that here you might get a substantial Shiite majority rearming, developing weapons of mass destruction, to try to get rid of the U.S. outposts that are there to try to make sure that the U.S. controls most of the oil reserves of the world. Is Washington going to sit there and allow that? That’s kind of next to inconceivable.
What I’ve just read from the business press the last couple of days probably reflects the thinking in Washington and London: “Uh well, okay, we’ll let them have a government, but we’re not going to pay any attention to what they say.” In fact the Pentagon announced at the same time two days ago: we’re keeping 120,000 troops there into at least 2007, even if they call for withdrawal tomorrow.
And the propaganda is very evident right in these articles. You can even write the commentary now: We just have to do it because we have to accomplish our mission of bringing democracy to Iraq. If they have an elected government that doesn’t understand that, well, what can we do with these dumb Arabs, you know? Actually that’s very common because look, after all, the U.S. has overthrown democracy after democracy, because the people don’t understand. They follow the wrong course. So therefore, following the mission of establishing democracy, we’ve got to overthrow their governments.
I think that conscription is going to be a last resort. The reason is the Vietnam experience. The Vietnam experience, I think, is the first time in the history of European imperialism that an imperial power tried to fight a colonial war with a citizen’s army. I mean the British didn’t do it, and the French had the Foreign Legion In colonial wars, civilians are just no good at. Colonial wars are too brutal and vicious and murderous. You just can’t take kids off the street and have them fight that kind of war. You need trained killers, like the French Foreign Legion.
In fact you could see it happening in Vietnam. To its credit, the U.S. army fell apart. It took too long, but finally the army essentially fell apart. Soldiers were on drugs, they were fragging officers, not following orders, and so on and the top brass wanted them out. If you look back at the military journals in the late Sixties, they were writing about how we gotta get this army out of here or the army’s going to collapse­much like the head of the Army reserves said two or three days ago. He said this is becoming a broken force.

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 2 2005 23:58 utc | 26

And, lo, Bush Created Democracy

Posted by: lonesomeG | Feb 3 2005 0:30 utc | 28

Allawi’s government decried as most corrupt in the history of Iraq by Shi’ite politician tipped to be next Prime Minister

Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 3 2005 6:57 utc | 30

American soldiers demoted for robbing Iraqi store, other soldiers escape any punishment for robbing Iraqis of thousands of dollars

Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 3 2005 7:41 utc | 32

Swedish, good, here the Iraq. vote registring was a disaster, glad to hear it worked well in other places.
The Shiite / Sunni difference has crept up slowly and has now attained respectability, acceptance. Newspapers world-wide publish maps of areas dominated “by … ” and everyone nods, how informative, now I understand.
Oh, and there are the Kurds, they want to do their own thing.
“Insurgents” are now labelled ‘Sunnis’ for the first time.
Previously, insurgents were not specifically described, were called terrorists, ex-Baathists, Saddam supporters, Syrians, Iranians, other foreign elements, haters of democracy, Islamic fundamentalists, ayatollahs, Z followers, Binny admirers, even ‘the disaffected’, and so forth. All evil and weird. Bad people!
Now, yup!, Sunnis. Ayrab tribe, don’t ya know, religious, got a beef, don’t believe in democracy, etc. etc. Were Saddamites!
The US can’t hold Iraq. It will be split up (makes sense, right, those people just can’t get along..ancestral enemies…murder and mayhem…no capacity for compromise..) and everyone will accept that.
Aid will flow. Oof! The West does its best!
(cf. Balkans.)

Posted by: Blackie | Feb 3 2005 20:19 utc | 34