Phil online

This week, Iraq voted for the first time in decades. Anti-Bushies might have scoffed that Iraq has voted many times in recent years. For example Saddam in 2002 received 100% of the votes in an election with 100% voter turnout. Zero votes were received against him. Pretty incredible! In 1995 Saddam was also elected, but there were 3,052 votes against him. I wonder what happened to those 3,052 people? Did they change their minds by 2002? If we can find one still alive, maybe we can ask him.

But my scoffing-fears were abated, when the Sunni came to my rescue. They boycotted the election. It may be claimed that the Iraqis have had regular elections over the past several decades. And it may be claimed that the Iraqis have regularly shown us up with their remarkable turnouts. But this election the Iraqis had something that they have been missing for a long time: the freedom not to vote.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2005 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.