Redstate

are already starting to sound like the Democrats........, worried that their votes won't count or that the vote might be rigged.

Well, I guess it is becoming more of a democracy every day. Pretty soon they will be claiming that their media has a liberal bias. Ha!

I hope that the people of Iraq can find some peace and some propsperity in the coming days. They are such beautiful people, and they have so much courage. They certainly deserve it after all they have been through.

Soon they will have an Iraqi Jesse Jackson, and Iraqi CNN, an Iraqi Ted Kennedy and an Iraqi Howard Dean.

God! What have we done?

Heh!

We will see the new Iraq with a Constitution, but we all know the Left will avoid this subject in the near future and use something else to try and show the war was not worth it.

Did you actually read the post? The Peshmerga closed the voting center and redirected the Sunnis who showed up to another center. The Peshmerga, for those of you who know nothing about Iraq, are Kurdish militia.

You want to compare this to Democratic carping? Get real. The Dems make much ado about nothing, but this is serious. Suppose on election day you show up to your local precint, and there are armed militia speaking Spanish who direct you elsehwere to vote. You get to that other polling place, only to find that they won't let you vote and that you have to return to the original voting precint. You know - the one the armed Spanish speaking guys just told you to leave.

Then, when you are in line to vote, no one is sure if you will be allowed to vote. The guys taking the ballots are allied with the armed Spanish speaking militia out front. Are they going to fairly count the ballots - or are they going to toss them in the trash and stuff in their own?

How would you know either way? See the problem - the Sunnis don't trust the system. And not just the Sunnis. Many of the complaints of voting fraud in the last election originated in Nineveh in mostly Christian areas. I have tons of first person accounts forwarded to me by Iraqi Christians detailing the same kinds of things that happened today to the Sunnis.

Look Republicans - wake the heck up. If our friends the Kurds and Shi'ites don't make the Sunnis feel secure in their persons, liberties, and property, then they are going to keep shooting. That means we are stuck there. Stop being reflexive in your thinking. In the U.S. the Dems just complain. In Iraq, disenfranchised Sunnis set of IED's and kill U.S. troops.

The Kurdish and Shi'ite leadership are playing for keeps, and either we make them play by the rules or we are all in for a rough sled.

This post from Mosul simply makes that clear.

One blog post from a teen opposed to the constitution and hostile toward the American troops relates that the Peshmerga were manning the polling stations, and you deliver a textbook rant upon the sky falling and exposing voter fraud?  Please.

Look, drop the "you Republicans" nonsense.  That some Sunnis trust no one and nothing involved in the new Iraq is a well-known fact.  It was a system shock to wake up one morning and find that their guy was no longer running the show, that his statue had been taken down.

You start to ease them into trust by including the in the constitutional discussions despite not having participating in great numbers in January's election.  They were not made to pay for their mistake, or any such thing.

The problem, dear friend, seems to be the mullahs.  They say vote one way, and the believers tend to vote that way.  It's a natural part of human culture, here as there.

You cannot change a culture or a subculture by snapping your fingers and tossing the Democrat faerie dust.  It takes time.<.p>

In case you've missed it, the revolution is underway.  Now run along.

I will not run along. Why are militia manning voting stations? Why have the Peshmerga not been disarmed? Why have the police and military in the South been completely infiltrated by Shi'ite militia?

Yes, the mullahs tell them how to vote, and most of the people dutifully obey. I agree.

Of course, haven't most Republicans been talking about Iraq being so secular and all? Yet, you seem to know that's a lie. If the Mullhas hold that much sway, then what kind of politics are we to expect?

Why are we so intent on bringing Democracy to a nation in which armed, private militia are still wielding power? Will the Sunnis ever give up their own underground military, as long as the Kurds and the Shi'ite have theirs?

If ethnic voting blocs coalesce into hard factions, how can someone belonging to a minority ever hope to gain any influence?

These are all HUGE questions. Then you throw in the Islam factor, which has not been conducive to the development of civil society, and you have a really, really big Molotov cocktail.

Sure, write me off as an alarmist. I think this thing is being completely mishandled and that this vote shouldn't even be happening under the current conditions.

Maybe that is alarmist. But Rumsfeld and others predicted that the insurgency would be done years ago. Remember? That hasn't happened.

This post is not the only one reporting that Sunnis and Assyrians had problems voting. Add that to the presence of 'enemy' militia on the streets of Sunni and Christian towns, and you have a recipe for continued fighting.

That's a bad thing, in case you didn't know.

By the way, I served in the USMC from 1988 to 1992. Did you?

... I found Namja's post fairly positive.

Those who've followed Star From Mosul in the past may remember that Namja
has had very little positive to say about much of anything that's happened since before
the invasion. She grew up well off in a Sunni household and resents the fact
that she's no longer "more equal" than the Shia and Kurdish rabble. I pretty
much quit following her blog after 2Slick
wrote a lengthy post about why he was de-linking her. It seems one of her
friends was injured when some American Soldiers had the audacity to fire back
at  some terrorists and her friend was in the wrong place at the wrong
time, which resulted in a rather frank email exchange between 2Slick, who was
stationed in the Mideast at the time, and Namja, who considered it all America's
fault.

IF the Peshmargah really tried to prevent Sunnis from voting, that's
obviously a matter that needs looked into. It puts a little perspective on it,
though, to remember that Mosul is a traditionally Kurdish city that Saddam
chased the Kurds out of and turned over to the Sunnis there's obviously still
some friction between the two groups in that area.

On a more positive note, there's

an email on my site from a naturalized American who still has family in Iraq
(His father moved back to Iraq after Saddam was deposed). An excerpt:

I spoke to my father last night about 8am his time in Nejaf and he
said he was going to go vote at 9am. ... I called my father again around 9am my
time. He said he had voted (yes for the constitution) and that the turnout was
strong and matters were calm. Security in Nejaf was very good indeed he said.

[...]

Again the Ajinas in McKinleyville CA and in Iraq owe a
great thank you to the men and women of the USA (military &
civilians) who are making all of this possible. Thank you for all
your sacrifices, all your hard work, and your tenacity and vision
and thank you for a bright future.

Regards
Haider Ajina
McKinleyville CA

Okay, your were a junior enlisted man in the Marines. Nice. What does that have to do with anything other than being a low level chickenhawking attack?

You posted a terrific analysis, brutus. I will only add this quote which comes from the BBC website:

One of the few who does not mind being named, Professor Adel al Thamary of Basra University, told me:

"All in all, our life is worse than when we used to live under Saddam because now we are under fire. Now we can be killed any time on the streets."

Our foreign policy in the Middle East has been and continues to be a costly disaster.