INTERNATIONAL LAW: 'FREE ELECTION' IN IRAQ IS ILLEGAL

INTERNATIONAL LAW: 'FREE ELECTION' IN IRAQ IS ILLEGAL

The election is a farce, in an occupied country where people landing there, including the top military, can not be taken from the airport to Baghdad City other than by helicopter. The biggest military force in the world is not even able to secure twenty kilometers of road between the airport and the city, because of the fierce resistance by the Iraqis.

WHITE HOUSE ADMITS IRAQI ELECTIONS WILL BE FLAWED

by Henk Ruyssenaars

Washington - White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, already two weeks ago said that Iraq’s election “is not going to be perfect,” due to the escalating violence in the war-torn country, which already cost the lives of 12 people this morning.
[Latest - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/42krg]

And the same day - in an as usual very underreported - comment, Dem. Senator Edward Kennedy compared again Iraq to the quagmire of Vietnam: “I do not retreat from the view that Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam,'' Kennedy said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.*

White House spokesman McClellan was also forced to confirm a Washington Post report ''that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has ended''. Asked whether the U.S. occupation forces were no longer searching for WMD in Iraq, McClellan replied: “That's my understanding.”

THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WERE THE U.S. PRESIDENT
GEORGE W. BUSH'S JUSTIFICATION FOR THE INVASION OF IRAQ.

However, McClellan insisted that ending the search for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction doesn't affect Bush’s view that the war was justified.

“THE PRESIDENT KNOWS THAT BY ADVANCING FREEDOM IN A DANGEROUS
REGION, WE ARE MAKING THE WORLD A SAFER PLACE,'' HE SAID.

This point of view by the Bush administration and 'spinmeister' Karl Rove-disciple and 'His Master's Voice' Scotty McClellan, is not shared by the rest of the world, nor by the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who in a rare moment of honesty told the BBC that ''the whole war in Iraq is illegal''.*

Also Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, one of the Democratic Party's main critics of Bush's murderous 'gun ship' policies, described the Iraq war as “misguided” and said that the United States must reverse course and change its policy.

“I DO NOT RETREAT FROM THE VIEW THAT IRAQ IS GEORGE BUSH'S VIETNAM,
''KENNEDY SAID IN A SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON.

“The elections will be messy”

Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Washington have no choice but to go ahead with the elections as scheduled due to the political pressures facing Bush.

“The elections will be messy, and probably uneven, but they can and should be held, because the fragility of the situation means things would likely fall apart with a delay,'' Kipper said.* [end]

The same day in 'Liberated Iraq' the by the americans supported prime minister Allawi declared that Iraq is not prepared for holding elections.

Why the war and elections as taking place in Iraq are illegal was last december explained by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in her article "Do we support the planned Iraqi elections?"*

In her article she states: " not every election is a legitimate instrument of democracy. An election cannot be legitimate when it is conducted under foreign military occupation;

when the country is nominally ruled by, and the election will be officially run by, a puppet government put and kept in place by the occupying army and the election will be under the ultimate control of the occupying army;

when war is raging extensively enough to prevent participation by much of the population;

and when the election is designed to choose a new assembly responsible for drafting a constitution and selecting a government that will continue to function under the conditions of military occupation.

(We can see a dangerous precedent in Afghanistan where U.S. support ensured the election of Hamid Karzai.)

As currently planned, the January 30th elections in Iraq are designed to provide a veneer of credibility and legitimacy to the continuation of U.S. control of Iraq, through election of a U.S.-friendly government that will welcome the U.S. military bases in Iraq, and through the drafting of a U.S.-oriented constitution.
[ Full story - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6k4dq]

The excellent journalist and writer Robert Fisk who at present again is in Baghdad, yesterday published an article in "The Independent" under the heading "This election will change the world. But not in the way the Americans imagined".* He predicted that "Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.

America has insisted on these elections - which will produce a largely Shia parliament representing Iraq's largest religious community - because they are supposed to provide an exit strategy for embattled US forces, but they seem set to change the geopolitical map of the Arab world in ways the Americans could never have imagined. For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large.

Amid curfews, frontier closures and country-wide travel restrictions, voting in Iraq will begin tomorrow under the threat of Osama bin Laden's ruling that the poll represents an "apostasy". Voting started among expatriate Iraqis yesterday in Britain, the US, Sweden, Syria and other countries, but the turnout was much smaller than expected.

ELECTION MAY BE BLOODY

[Today's] election may be bloody. It may well produce a parliament so top-heavy with Shia candidates that the Americans will be tempted to "top up" the Sunni assembly members by choosing some of their own, who will inevitably be accused of collaboration. But it will establish Shia power in Iraq - and in the wider Arab world - for the first time since the great split between Sunnis and Shias that followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad. [END]

The election is a farce, in an occupied country where landing correspondents can not be taken from the airport to Baghdad City other than by helicopter. The biggest military force in the world is not even able to secure the twenty kilometers of road between airport and city because of the fierce resistance by the Iraqis.

The whole scene is a bloody sham and shame on the US and it's bribed, blackmailed and bullied 'allies'

Journalists and correspondents who say anything else are lying as usual.

Henk Ruyssenaars

* NPC/Kennedy - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4qq76

* BBC/Annan - http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* Story by Robert Fisk - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/696b52005

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Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
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The Dutch author has this far worked abroad for 4 decades for international media,as a foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East.

Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism ! US Senator Hollings agrees: "We have caused more terrorism than we have gotten rid of" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2bqza

Former PM Kok - and other Dutch Government's war criminals heard in Court-Url: http://tinyurl.com/662pp - It can be done!

Evil triumphs when good men, women and we journalists remain silent: - http://tinyurl.com/3tgqa -

Help the troops come home ! Url.: http://tinyurl.com/3o6tr - We need them badly to fight our 'governments':
http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

HR

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