Election Officials Move Attention to Anbar to Shift Spin
CNN has posted the latest on the investigations into "voting irregularities" during the Constitutional referendum in Iraq. Notably, the mainly Sunni province of Anbar is for the first time being specifically mentioned due to its high percentage of "no" votes. Ninevah and Diyala still remain unmentioned. It appears that the latest strategy (strategy #3) appears to be to admit to ballot box stuffing by all ethnicities but claim it was all inconsequential or a wash.
All these shifting PR strategies just further detract from the legitimacy of this vote. But who though the group runningt this vote had much credibility to begin with given that just a week before the election the "government" wanted the term "voters" to mean two different things in the same provision.
Where are the international monitors? Where are U.S. leaders who now claim our soldiers are dying at a rate of more than 2 a day to bring democracy to Iraq?
Condi Rice oddly and prematurely claimed victory for the Constitution on Sunday (though, in doing so, she played the Bushie gamme of using words meant to create an impression but which later could be retreated from). What the U.S. and our media are really doing is saying: "SSSHHHH ... don't tell anyone that we are paying for and our soldiers are dying for faked votes and new thugs."
All these shifting PR strategies just further detract from the legitimacy of this vote. But who though the group runningt this vote had much credibility to begin with given that just a week before the election the "government" wanted the term "voters" to mean two different things in the same provision.
Where are the international monitors? Where are U.S. leaders who now claim our soldiers are dying at a rate of more than 2 a day to bring democracy to Iraq?
Condi Rice oddly and prematurely claimed victory for the Constitution on Sunday (though, in doing so, she played the Bushie gamme of using words meant to create an impression but which later could be retreated from). What the U.S. and our media are really doing is saying: "SSSHHHH ... don't tell anyone that we are paying for and our soldiers are dying for faked votes and new thugs."
posted by Macswain at
3:08 PM
1 Comments:
The New York Times coverage of this referendum has been abysmal. They constantly quote Iraqi election officials without stating who they are or even letting their readers know the biases of these people. They never pose the big questions regarding the legitimacy of the vote --- most importantly, whhat credible authority is vouching for the accuracy and reliability of the vote count.
Edward Wong, Dexter Filkins and the rest of the Times staff reporting on this issue should be ashamed. Apparently, the Judith Miller School of Journalism still predominates at the Times.
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Macswain, at 10:41 AM
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