by James Glaser
February 1, 2005

Here is a headline from the Associated Press on Sunday, January 30th, 2005. Audit: $9 Billion Unaccounted for in Iraq

No one should be surprised by this report. From that day in 2003 when President Bush gave his Mission Accomplished Speech, to Sunday, when the Iraqis had their election, Washington has made mistake after mistake in Iraq. If over 12,000 American Troops and untold tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis had not been killed and maimed, we might even get a chuckle out of it.

We may as well laugh about the $9 billion because it is gone now, we handed it over to Iraqis and never even asked them to keep track of how they spent it. I imagine with nine thousand, million dollar bundles, some enterprising Iraqi bureaucrats were able to open Swiss bank accounts.

There are reports that we have spent close to $220 billion so far in Iraq and Bush just asked for another $80 billion, so this lost $9 billion is really less than 3% of the total. I'm sure the Pentagon blows that much every month.

You want a good laugh? There were over 7,700 candidates an Iraqi could vote for and all of them were running for one of the 275 seats in the Assembly. Iraqis didn't get to even look at a ballot with names of those running, everyone got a number and you voted for that number. Many Candidates were afraid to even say that they were running out of fear of being killed by the insurgency.

Washington is tickled pink about the turnout for the election, but when you stop to think about it and realize that no one voting even knew the names of the candidates running, the whole election seems to be a sham.

I know that Washington regards International Law as something the rest of the world has to obey, but it is hard for me to believe that even George Bush can think it is legal to have an election when a country is still occupied by a foreign power whose troops control everything. Of course he does.

Eric Margolis writes in the Toronto Sun, "During the Cold War, elections staged by the Soviets after invading Afghanistan, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia were rightly denounced by the US as "frauds" and the leaders elected as "stooges."

Want another sick joke? American Generals are now saying our troops will have to stay in Iraq until at least 2007 and maybe much longer.

George Bush talks about Iraqi freedom and Democracy and we will know Iraq is free, if they tell us to leave. Right now, the American presence in Iraq is fueling the insurgency and the longer we stay, the longer the killing and chaos will continue.

An Iraqi woman by the name of Hawra Karama wrote about what it was like voting in this election. She said that in the last two elections, the only question on the ballot was "Do you want Saddam Hussein to be your President? A) Yes. B) No."

In this election she said she felt like the questions should be, "Which of the following CIA-paid Iraqis should represent you?" Also, "Which American Company do you believe should be awarded a monopoly on Iraq's oil?"

I have to admit I was impressed with the turnout for this election and it really shows the courage of the Iraqi people, but please don't tell me that this was a democratic election or that it was a step toward freedom. In a real democracy, the voters are at least told who is running for office. In Iraq that information was kept a secret. This was not a real election. This was something put together by the Bush Administration, so that they could say that we are making progress. Unfortunately, it is the same kind of progress and the same kind of election that the Soviets used in the Cold War to give their puppets some legitimacy and it is the same kind of election we had in Afghanistan.

Some day, I hope and pray that the people of Iraq will have a real election with real candidates that the people can look at and ask questions of, so that they can be an informed electorate. What those brave voters did on Sunday was not democracy, it was a game of numbers and those holding the election will be able to play with those numbers anyway they want. Sad to say, many people died believing that this kind of election is what democracy is all about. No body in Iraq has any idea of who they voted for or what that candidate stood for and those in power (Washington) will be able to say who won and who lost.