<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
All:<BR>
<BR>
If you were considering voting in an election under military occupation, a military that goes house to house breaking down doors at gun point to arrest those suspected of opposing said military, arrests occurring in a legal vacuum with no guarantees of habeas corpus, or access to courts and lawyers offering a guaranteed defense of suspects, where the occupying military was known to torture suspects, would you feel free to vote in any manner to oppose the occupying forces?<BR>
<BR>
And now on to more reality based discussion of the Iraq "election." Read below.<BR>
<BR>
4 p.m. ET -- Tuesday, February 1, 2005 <BR>
<BR>
Aftermath of Iraqi Voting: <BR>
<BR>
ANTONIA JUHASZ, <BR>
<BR>
<A HREF="http://by16fd.bay16.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?curmbox=F000000001&a=59f0be1e3cf4e920273f361647cb2831&mailto=1&to=ajuhasz@ifg.org&msg=MSG1107293740.38&start=10172148&len=9388&src=&type=x">ajuhasz@ifg.org</A>, <BR>
<BR>
<A HREF="javascript:ol('http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21100');">http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21100</A><BR>
<BR>
Juhasz wrote the recent article "Of Oil And Elections." She said today: "The front-runner for the new Prime Minister of Iraq is Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's current Finance Minister who announced on Dec. 21 that his government was hoping to privatize its oil and that this would be 'very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.' ... Mahdi's party, the United Iraqi Alliance, the leading Shia political party, is expected to win the majority of votes once they are tallied, particularly given the fact that, as reported by AP, polls were largely deserted in cities across the Sunni Triangle, particularly Fallujah, Ramadi and Beiji. In the Sunni area of Azamiyah, the neighborhood's four polling centers did not open at all." Juhasz is project director at the International Forum on Globalization and a Foreign Policy In Focus scholar. <BR>
<BR>
----------------------------------------------------<BR>
<BR>
V2020 Post by Ted Moffett<BR>
</FONT></HTML>