In 1973, in the wake of the Watergate scandals, the byword was "Follow the money." In 2005, with scandals in election fraud, phony war build-ups, war profiteering, illegal surveillance against political and international opponents, indictments against high U.S. administration officials for perjury and obstruction of justice, scandals on bribery, money laundering, and God knows what else, the new byword for those who would untangle the mess behind the various scandals is "Follow the people and their links... preferably via Google."
Today's AP wire/Yahoo news says that a UN offical, Craig Jenness, said "his U.N.-led international election assistance team found the elections to be fair."
This diary is an attempt to throw some light on the fairness of the December Iraq elections. Using Google-mining technology, I will reveal who Craig Jenness is, and where he comes from. Readers can judge or add to the analysis herein.
(Continued after the flap) [Note: this diary edited from earlier deleted diary, which had a dubious source, now edited out as not necessary and detracting from substance of the story]
Josh Marshall is asking for input on whether we can believe the charges of recent Iraqi electoral fraud.
On his blog, Talking Points Memo, he wrote: "... there's no real way to get a handle on what's happening without some relatively independent analysis of whether these allegations of fraud are legitimate."
From the AP/Yahoo article(12/28, byline, Patrick Quinn):
"The United Nations is of the view that these elections were transparent and credible," said Jenness, a Canadian electoral expert.
"Jenness said the number of complaints was less than one for every 7,000 voters. About 70 percent of Iraq's 15 million voters went to the polls....
"In our view, all communities of Iraq have won in these elections, all will have a strong voice in parliament. We hope the elections will be the start of a new process of strength and unity in Iraq," Jenness said.
So, the analysis starts off with: Who is Craig Jenness?
"A Canadian electoral expert"? Now working for the office of the UN Secretary General, and the head of an "international election assistance team", according to the World University Service of Canada, Mr. Jenness previously spent 10 years working for an organization that I never heard of until today: the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE. In their own words, this group maintains that "with 55 States from Europe, Central Asia and North America, the OSCE forms the largest regional security organization in the world." That's a tall statement. What else can we find out?
According to their own fact sheet (PDF), the OSCE was a creature of early 1970s detente. First called the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), it changed its name after the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, and the fall of the old Soviet Union. It really kicked into high gear when it became central in the reconstruction efforts in the Balkans, after the civil wars there, and in Kosovo. It was very involved in supervising elections there, along with much else.
It is with the elections that Mr. Jenness reenters the picture. A Canadian, with a law degree from the University of Ottowa, Mr. Jenness spent most of the 1990s and the first years of this decade working for OSCE in the Balkans. He was Head of the Spillover Monitor Mission to Skopje between July 2001 and November 2003. Previously he was Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo; Special Deputy Head of Mission in Bosnia/Herzogovina (BiH); Chairperson, National Elections Results Implementation Committee (BiH), and Head of the Human Rights Division (BiH). In other words, Mr. Jenness is a top diplomat for a former ostensible NGO, which in reality is a major organization with which the United States and major European powers try to implement security agreements and keep civil order around the globe. The training of local police forces has, for instance, also been a top priority for OSCE.
Whether you consider OSCE the good guys, or, like some, a proto-formation of the New World Order, it IS a very interesting player on the world scene. Let's Google it a little farther. (I know this diary is getting long, but I will try and summarize as well as I can.)
One interesting fact about OSCE (from Wikipedia):
After a group of 13 democratic US senators petitioned Secretary of State Colin Powell to have foreign election monitors oversee the 2004 US presidential election, the State Department acquiesced, and President Bush invited the OSCE to do so.
[link]
Bush? welcomed an ostensible European organization to monitor the U.S. elections?? Bill O'Reilly! Ann Coulter! Why weren't you screaming about this??? -- Well, maybe because the OSCE isn't so foreign after all. It's U.S. Mission to the OSCE claims: "Through the OSCE, the U.S. promotes democratic transformation, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, regional stability and post-conflict reconciliation, arms control, confidence and security building measures, economic prosperity, and sustainable environmental policies. The OSCE also has a role to play in helping to win the global war against terrorism."
Our ambassador to the OSCE is Julie Finley, "National Finance Co-Chairman for Bush-Cheney '04 for the District of Columbia and Co-Chairman of Team 100 for the Republican National Committee from 1997 through 2004" (link). Yeah... that's it. The perfect person to oversee and monitor the U.S. 2004 elections! But how would we ever know that? Which leads to my point:
The devil in all this is in the details. If we are to know the truth behind the smokescreen of lies and half-truths we have to dig deep. What I have written above is only a small piece of my research. There are a few other important points to consider re the Iraq elections connection.
Major Bush administration officials participate in and speak to primary OSCE institutional boards. For instance, Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns delivered a message of strong U.S. support for the OSCE at the recent (13th) OSCE Ministerial Council meeting. Mr. Burns, a strong supporter of the U.S. war in Iraq, is the 3rd highest ranking figure at State, was recently ambassador to NATO, and a career civil servant, who also was head of Soviet affairs under GW Bush during the time of the fall of the Soviet Union. (He also held various posts under Clinton, too. Some may remember Burns as a controversial appointee to the Republican right, i.e., that he was a tainted Clintonite, which elicited this Power Line rejoinder in his defense.) My point, again, is that these folks wouldn't so supportive of OSCE if it wasn't furthering their goals.
If you peruse the documents and history of OSCE you will find much that seems positive, e.g. statements on record regarding human rights, against torture, involvement in de-mining of former civil war battlefields in Tajikistan, paper support for freedom of the press and democratic reforms in general. The membership of the organization, at least at leadership levels, seems to overlap with national diplomatic and UN staff. It's main aim seems to be the construction of Western "democratic" norms in former states of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. It appears to have taken no stance on the Iraq war
In the last analysis, with its major aims focused on arms control, drug trafficking and police training, the emphasis on security and anti-terrorism, the OSCE seems to be an arm of U.S./UK global diplomacy and international intervention. It imposes its program on the other member states, much as the U.S. imposed its program upon NATO, and to a certain extent, the UN. It is an organization we need to know more about.
I hope this diary has opened up the discussion about the validity of the Iraq elections. It was not meant as any kind of definitive analysis of those elections. But it is meant as a warning about accepting prima facie any statement by UN, U.S., OSCE, or other presumedly legitimate political entities regarding their conclusions about this election.
It is so easy to go, "Oh yeah, a Canadian attorney who's working for the UN Secretary General says the Iraq elections were fair, so I, Mr. Liberal, assume they must be... right? The complainers are just anti-democratic Sunnis, etc. I don't like the results, but, oh well..."
There is much we don't know about how things are run, and much still to learn. Why aren't the mainstream press and even big time blogs doing there job on this?
Joshua Micah Marshall, are you listening?