Iraqis Defy Attackers in Historic Election

[KSig RC]

Originally posted by HBADPi
Nope sorry not happening.

Thanks for that report from the Green Zone - care to elaborate for me, though? Seriously.

[XOMichelle]

God I hope this works for them.

[Kevin]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
I can already tell you the winner of the election: America.

As soon as the Iraqis have their own government set up, the insurgent attacks will be seen as attacks on the people and their own legitimate government, not on the US occupation or a "puppet government". And perhaps that means Iraqis will back their military and police will work harder and won't be picked off as quick as they join up.

I can only wonder how many lives may have been saved if the US had let the Iraqis have elections earlier.And this frees us up a bit to find those WMD that are our reason for being in there.

Can't you ever just be happy that good things are happening?

Your attempts to find something bad in this situation appear very desperate.

[Shortfuse]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
I.And this frees us up a bit to find those WMD that are our reason for being in there.

HA!HA!HA!

[HBADPi]

Originally posted by PhiPsiRuss
You might want to back up your flippant statement.

All I meant by that statement is that this isnt the domino effect that you may think. This isnt as grand of an event as the Berlin wall falling sorry but I dont see 7th graders reading about the Iraqi elections in this World History classes in 10 yrs. The only way you're going to get "democracy" in other Arab countries is to do what the US did with Iraq - attack. Despite the elections, Al Queda still threatens to attack and Iraq is still under the constant threat of terrorism. Perhaps if and when the elections prove to be a success you can claim the rest of the Arab world will want to be in the same position as Iraq.

A high voter turnout isn't an indication of the people's want for "democracy" or a successful election. Millions of voters turned out for elections under Saddam Hussein too. During those elections, there were pictures of "joyous" Iraqis at the polls then as well. There are a lot of Iraqis who aren't celebrating and who aren't happy. They don't even have electricity or water or gasoline. Further more the Shitte and Kurds came out in big numbers, the problem still exists with the Sunnis. If the Sunnis arent involved in the creation of the new democracy Iraq wont advance one bit - with or without free elections.

[DeltAlum]

The folks that voted showed a lot of courage, and no matter what the eventual outcome I have to feel good for them.

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

Down syndrome youth used as suicide bomber
By Paul McGeough, Baghdad
February 2, 2005

Amar was 19, but he had the mind of a four-year-old. This handicap didn't stop the insurgency's hard men as they strapped explosives to his chest and guided him to a voting centre in suburban Al-Askan.

And before yesterday's sunrise in Baghdad, his grieving parents loaded his broken remains on the roof of a taxi to lead a sorrowful procession to the holy city of Najaf. There, they gave him a ceremonial wash, shrouded him in white cotton and buried him next to the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of their Shiite creed.

On Sunday we witnessed an act of collective courage by an estimated 8 million Iraqis as they faced down terrorist threats of death and mayhem to vote in Iraq's first multi-party election in half a century.

But the election day story of Amar is from the other side of human behaviour - in a region where too many have knowingly volunteered for an explosive death in the name of their god. He was chosen because he didn't know.

He had Down syndrome or, as the Iraqis say, he's a mongoli, and when his parents, Ahmed, 42, and Fatima, 40, went to vote with their two daughters Amar was left in the family home.
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They presume that in their absence he set out to fill his day as he always did - wandering the streets of the neighbourhood until, usually, a friend or neighbour would bring him home around dusk.

Al-Askan is a mixed and dangerous suburb. Yesterday the Iraqi police allowed The Age to advance only a few blocks into the area before ordering us out. The area around the family's home was the centre of a running gunfight between Shiites of the Al-Bahadel tribe and Sunnis of the Al-Ghedi tribe.

But one of Amar's cousins, a 29-year-old teacher who asked not to be named, retreated to a distracted state in which Iraqis often discuss death to tell their story as best they can. "They must have kidnapped him," he said. "He was like a baby. He had nothing to do with the resistance and there was nothing in the house for him to make a bomb. He was Shiite. Why bomb his own people?

"He was mindless, but he was mostly happy, laughing and playing with the children in the street. Now, his father is inconsolable; his mother cries all the time," the teacher said.

After voting at 7.30am, Amar's parents joined their extended family for a celebration that became a lunch of chicken and rice, soup and orange juice, at the home of a relative.

The sound of the explosion interrupted the party. But, the cousin said, it was assumed to be a mortar shell, a follow-up to the barrage across the city in the first hours of voting.

"Everyone was very happy and excited, but news came that a mongoli had been a bomber. Ahmed and Fatima became distressed and they raced home. They got neighbours to search and one of them identified Amar's head where it lay on the pavement and his body was broken into pieces.

"I have heard of them using dead people and donkeys and dogs to hide their bombs, but how could they do this to a boy like Amar?"

Apparently, Amar triggered the bomb before he got to the intended target. It exploded while he was crossing open ground.

Amar's father served in Saddam's army, but now he sells cigarettes in a street market in Al-Askan, an area of the city that also displayed bravery in the casting of votes on Sunday.

[RUgreek]

animals.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by HBADPi
All I meant by that statement is that this isnt the domino effect that you may think.

That's not a fact, but an opinion that you still are not backing up.

Originally posted by HBADPi
This isnt as grand of an event as the Berlin wall falling sorry but I dont see 7th graders reading about the Iraqi elections in this World History classes in 10 yrs.

Again, as above.

Originally posted by HBADPi
The only way you're going to get "democracy" in other Arab countries is to do what the US did with Iraq - attack.

That is yet another opinion, and not only can't you back it up, but it betrays a poor understanding of the emergence of democracies. Iraq didn't just have an authoritarian regime, it was totalitarian. It was the one nation in the Middle East that could not transition to a democracy without external intervention. Saying that other nations in the Middle East can't transition to a democracy without an American invasion is completely false. There are no more totalitarian governments in the Arab world. What is needed by the U.S. with nations like Egypt is not action, but inaction. All the U.S. has to do is not support the current regimes, provided that new variables don't emerge.

Originally posted by HBADPi
Despite the elections, Al Queda still threatens to attack and Iraq is still under the constant threat of terrorism.

What the rest of the Arab world wants has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Also, Al Qaeda's presence in Iraq will prove to be, at best, marginally relevant. Everyone knew that when Sadaam was removed, there would be a civil war. What is currently happening is that the civil war is being very well managed. Rather than 5+% of the population being wiped out, well less than 1% is being killed. If this civil war is managed to the point where it occurs only in debates on the floor of their parliament, then this will prove to be one of the greatest experiments in democracy ever, and those who opposed it may be viewed by history as equivalents of Nazi sympathizers.

Originally posted by HBADPi
Perhaps if and when the elections prove to be a success you can claim the rest of the Arab world will want to be in the same position as Iraq.

Or perhaps you should call a pollster like Zogby so that you can learn that what Arabs want is already known, and they wan't democracy.

Originally posted by HBADPi
A high voter turnout isn't an indication of the people's want for "democracy" or a successful election.

You're flat out wrong. When people are not coerced to vote, and their voting is done under the threat of death, then a high voter turnout is absolutely an indication of a people's want for democracy.

Originally posted by HBADPi
Millions of voters turned out for elections under Saddam Hussein too. During those elections, there were pictures of "joyous" Iraqis at the polls then as well.

And this was the opposite of what happened on Sunday. They were coerced into voting, and a failure to do so might have resulted in a loved one's trip to a rape room. Your comparison is illogical, and therefore invalid.

Originally posted by HBADPi
There are a lot of Iraqis who aren't celebrating and who aren't happy. They don't even have electricity or water or gasoline.

Do you want to provide percentages, and demographic breakdowns? In a nation of millions of people you can always find people who "aren't happy." There are former Baathists who aren't happy. Should anyone have been concerned with unhappy former Nazis in post-WWII Germany? That's a ridiculous waste of sympathy. As far as electricity or water, you forgot to mention that more Iraqi's currently have electricity and water than before the invasion, so what's yopur point?

Originally posted by HBADPi
Further more the Shitte and Kurds came out in big numbers,

Everyone came out in big numbers.

Originally posted by HBADPi
the problem still exists with the Sunnis. If the Sunnis arent involved in the creation of the new democracy Iraq wont advance one bit - with or without free elections.

No kidding. That's why all of the Shiite leaders were making inclusive statements before, and after the elections. The interim constitition requires that no more than two provinces may object to the new constitution, or there won't be one.

[mmcat]

when you have to use a handicapped child to push your meanness, what kind of soul are you?

[Rudey]

These suicide murderers...do people really understand what they are?

Do they understand how Iran used children to carry bombs and attack Iraqi soldiers?

Do they understand that children walked across mine fields between Iran and Iraq?

Do they understand how young these supposed "martyrs" are that murder Israelis and Arabs when there are children and teenagers, some even mentally unstable or retarded??

-Rudey

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
Down syndrome youth used as suicide bomber
By Paul McGeough, Baghdad
February 2, 2005

Amar was 19, but he had the mind of a four-year-old. This handicap didn't stop the insurgency's hard men as they strapped explosives to his chest and guided him to a voting centre in suburban Al-Askan.

And before yesterday's sunrise in Baghdad, his grieving parents loaded his broken remains on the roof of a taxi to lead a sorrowful procession to the holy city of Najaf. There, they gave him a ceremonial wash, shrouded him in white cotton and buried him next to the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of their Shiite creed.

On Sunday we witnessed an act of collective courage by an estimated 8 million Iraqis as they faced down terrorist threats of death and mayhem to vote in Iraq's first multi-party election in half a century.

But the election day story of Amar is from the other side of human behaviour - in a region where too many have knowingly volunteered for an explosive death in the name of their god. He was chosen because he didn't know.

He had Down syndrome or, as the Iraqis say, he's a mongoli, and when his parents, Ahmed, 42, and Fatima, 40, went to vote with their two daughters Amar was left in the family home.
AdvertisementAdvertisement

They presume that in their absence he set out to fill his day as he always did - wandering the streets of the neighbourhood until, usually, a friend or neighbour would bring him home around dusk.

Al-Askan is a mixed and dangerous suburb. Yesterday the Iraqi police allowed The Age to advance only a few blocks into the area before ordering us out. The area around the family's home was the centre of a running gunfight between Shiites of the Al-Bahadel tribe and Sunnis of the Al-Ghedi tribe.

But one of Amar's cousins, a 29-year-old teacher who asked not to be named, retreated to a distracted state in which Iraqis often discuss death to tell their story as best they can. "They must have kidnapped him," he said. "He was like a baby. He had nothing to do with the resistance and there was nothing in the house for him to make a bomb. He was Shiite. Why bomb his own people?

"He was mindless, but he was mostly happy, laughing and playing with the children in the street. Now, his father is inconsolable; his mother cries all the time," the teacher said.

After voting at 7.30am, Amar's parents joined their extended family for a celebration that became a lunch of chicken and rice, soup and orange juice, at the home of a relative.

The sound of the explosion interrupted the party. But, the cousin said, it was assumed to be a mortar shell, a follow-up to the barrage across the city in the first hours of voting.

"Everyone was very happy and excited, but news came that a mongoli had been a bomber. Ahmed and Fatima became distressed and they raced home. They got neighbours to search and one of them identified Amar's head where it lay on the pavement and his body was broken into pieces.

"I have heard of them using dead people and donkeys and dogs to hide their bombs, but how could they do this to a boy like Amar?"

Apparently, Amar triggered the bomb before he got to the intended target. It exploded while he was crossing open ground.

Amar's father served in Saddam's army, but now he sells cigarettes in a street market in Al-Askan, an area of the city that also displayed bravery in the casting of votes on Sunday.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by Rudey
These suicide murderers...do people really understand what they are?

Do they understand how Iran used children to carry bombs and attack Iraqi soldiers?

Do they understand that children walked across mine fields between Iran and Iraq?

Do they understand how young these supposed "martyrs" are that murder Israelis and Arabs when there are children and teenagers, some even mentally unstable or retarded??

-Rudey

Of course most Americans don't know this.

The modus operandi for suicide bombers is to recruit a disallusioned teen, and have him detonate less than 24 hours after he was recruited. He spends much of his last day on earth being brainwashed while isolated. Using a person with Down's Syndrome is not only despicable, but it strikes me as an act of desperation.

[KSig RC]

Originally posted by HBADPi
Further more the Shitte and Kurds came out in big numbers, the problem still exists with the Sunnis. If the Sunnis arent involved in the creation of the new democracy Iraq wont advance one bit - with or without free elections.

This is true, and this is why American influence still exists for the time being. However, compare this situation to the prior situation, where Kurds not only had no voice, but were subject to abasement, loss of property, and even mustard gas. To say that Sunnis are feeling a bit underrepresented at this early date, and thus the elections were a failure, shows a gross inability to reasonably compare wholly disparate situations.

[Rudey]

These are murderers like Saddam who want to terrorize a region.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/in...rint&position=

The New York Times

February 2, 2005
Iraqis Who Died While Daring to Vote Are Mourned as Martyrs
By EDWARD WONG

NAJAF, Iraq, Feb. 1 - Salim Yacoubi bent over to kiss the purple ink stain on his twin brother's right index finger, gone cold with death.

"You can see the finger with which he voted," Shukur Jasim, a friend of the dead man, said as he cast a tearful gaze on the body, sprawled across a washer's concrete slab. "He's a martyr now."

The stain marked the hard-won right to vote that Naim Rahim Yacoubi exercised Sunday, and the price he paid for that privilege.

Mr. Yacoubi, 37, was one of at least 50 Iraqis who died in bomb and mortar attacks as millions of people marched to polling centers in the first free elections in decades. At least nine suicide bombs exploded in Baghdad alone. In one of those, the bomber detonated his device outside Kurdis Primary School near the airport, sending dozens of shards of shrapnel into Mr. Yacoubi.

The victims of election day violence are being hailed by many Iraqis as the latest martyrs in a nearly two-year-long insurgency that has claimed the lives of thousands. They were policemen who tried to stop suicide bombers from entering polling centers, children who walked with elderly parents to cast votes, or - in the case of Mr. Yacoubi - a fishmonger who, after voting, took tea from his house to electoral workers at the school.

At polling centers hit by explosions, survivors refused to go home, steadfastly waiting to cast their votes as policemen swept away bits of flesh.

Shiite Arabs, oppressed under the rule of Saddam Hussein, turned out to vote in large numbers, and those who died in the attacks are being brought now to the sprawling cemetery in Najaf, this holiest of Shiite cities, for burials considered fitting of their sacrifices.

The official cause of death on Mr. Yacoubi's death certificate reads, "Explosion on the day of elections."

As the body washer sponged Mr. Yacoubi on Tuesday, blood as dark as the ink on his finger ran from cuts in the back of his head. Four wailing brothers clutched at the body. A group of women in full-length black keened outside.

"All of us talked about the elections," said Hadi Aziz, a 60-year-old neighbor. "We were waiting impatiently for this day so we could finally rid ourselves of all our troubles. Naim was just like any Iraqi who hoped for a better future for Iraq, who wanted stability for Iraq. We hoped that after the elections, the American forces would withdraw from our country."

Two days before the vote, the portly Mr. Yacoubi, a father of nine, drove with his friend Mr. Jasim to Khadimiya, a Shiite neighborhood, to have a new robe made for the occasion, Mr. Jasim said.

On Sunday, he got up at dawn. "He was very proud, and he put perfume on himself and gave out pastries and tea," Mr. Jasim said.

At 8:30, Mr. Yacoubi walked to the local primary school to cast his vote, Mr. Jasim said. He was frisked by policemen as he stood in line. Inside one of the classrooms, he checked off box No. 169 on the national ballot, for a slate of candidates backed by the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq.

Then, impressed by the dedication of the election workers, Mr. Yacoubi went home to boil tea for them, Mr. Jasim said. He had dropped off the tea glasses and was walking away when the bomb went off.

"It's not the man who exploded himself who's a martyr," Mr. Jasim said as the body washer wiped away dried blood. "He wasn't a true Muslim. This is the martyr. What religion asks people to blow themselves up? It's not written in the Koran."

Mr. Aziz, the neighbor, nodded.

"This is the courage of Iraqis," he said of Mr. Yacoubi's decision to vote, "and we will change the face of history. This is our message to the countries of the world, especially those that are still under a dictatorship and want to walk the same road as the Iraqis."

On Monday, another family arrived at the cemetery with the body of Ali Hussein Kadhum, 40, a farmer from Mahawil. Mr. Kadhum was one of five people killed by a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at their minivan as they drove from a polling center on Sunday, the family said.

"He told his family, 'We shouldn't go to the polls together, we should go one by one, because we may face terrorists,' " said an uncle, Muhammad Kadhum Jabaara. "It turned out he was right. Because of that, we got a chance to live."

In the dusty lot outside the washing rooms, another family strapped a coffin holding the body of a policeman, Adil al-Nassar, onto the roof of a blue minivan. He had just been cleaned. Now it was time to take him to the golden-domed Shrine of Ali for his final blessings. He was not the first policeman to be brought here.

Officer Nassar, 40, died after tackling a man who had leapt into a line of women waiting to vote at Osama bin Zaid Primary School, said Kadhum al-Hashim, the officer's father-in-law.

"There were many people, and Adil was just guiding the voters into the school when the terrorist jumped into the line of women," Mr. Hashim said. Several others died in the explosion, he added.

The victim's brother, Muhammad al-Nassar, wiped away tears with a white scarf.

Adil al-Nassar had joined the new police force just a year ago, his brother said. He had a family to feed: a wife and three children, the eldest an 8-year-old son.

"He's a martyr now," Mr. Nassar said. "He saved many lives for the greater good."

To which Mr. Hashim added proudly: "Despite the explosion, the voters came back to the polling center as if nothing had happened. The police just evacuated the bodies, then let people back in."

An elderly neighbor, Kadhum Hussein, said the elections had been worth all the heartache. "God has spared our lives and spared us from the dictator," he said as he scratched his white beard. "The situation is better than before, and we are freed from all things under the past regime."

One man in the funeral gathering showed visitors two palm-size laminated cards with Koranic verses that Adil al-Nassar had carried in his pocket. Each was marred by shrapnel holes. One verse read, "God, I ask you for your mercy, because we come to return to you and we ask you for your help and to meet our needs."

Just then, a station wagon pulled up with a pair of wooden coffins on the roof. Several men piled out and pulled from the coffins the bodies of two brothers, the intestines of one exposed.

They were killed Sunday by a mortar round as they walked with their parents to a polling center in a Baghdad slum, family members said.

Two more martyrs, they said, two more bodies to wash and bury.

-Rudey

[HBADPi]

Russ seriously I dont have the time or energy to go through line by line of your statements and I could very easily come up with links to back up my claims but I'm stuck in midterm hell right now in the last semester before I get my M.S. so I have better things to do with my time.

I'm allowed to state my opinion so back off! GC isnt just your sounding board, I give you the right to state your opinions and beliefs but dont force it other people. You really need to learn that. Most of the time I keep my mouth shut when I dont agree with things people say but allow them the right to say it.

Its way too early to be discussing the impact of the election and whether or not this will be as significant of a landmark as you like to claim so let's come back to this issue in 6 months and discuss.