The following may twist your knickers a little bit...be forewarned.
There are some interesting developments in Iraq, and some interesting progressive analysis about Iraq, which deserves to be reviewed, especially with an eye towards black ops, either sponsored by the U.S. government and military, or by various private ideological encampments.
First, remember the story about the forged ballots being intercepted coming over the Iran/Iraq border? Fake. The chief of the U.S.-trained forces guarding the border has denied the charge.
"This is all a lie," said Lieutenant General Ahmed al-Khafaji, the chief of the U.S.-trained force which has responsibility for all Iraq's borders.
"I heard this yesterday and I checked all the border crossings right away. The borders are all closed anyway," he told Reuters.
Iraq's frontiers are closed for the period of the election.
...Khafaji said that when he established the reports were false he tracked the source of the rumor, and said it appeared to have come from the Defense Ministry's intelligence unit.
More on this episode, and Robert Dreyfuss, on the flip.
Did the NY Times get fed
black ops from an unnamed official in the Iraqi government (perhaps connected to the U.S.), or is the Iraqi official lying? We don't know, and there's no reason to believe the NY Times, based upon a single anonymous source (or two), based upon their track record.
Equally interesting, in relation to this episode, is commentary from Robert Dreyfuss, prominent anti-Iraq-war commentator (who also frequently targets the Bush Administration), already piggy backing on the false claims of stuffed ballots, in order to villify a party he despises worse than the Bush Administration - Iran and religious Iraqi Shiites.
Now, the last thing I expected in sidling down to read the latest from Dreyfuss (about the "two directions" Iraq could go with this election and in regards to the likelihood of the continuing American military presence there depending on these) was to be hit with obviously biased and one-sided viewpoints from a progressive (not to mention TomPaine.com), but, alas, so it was...
Scenario One: The Sunnis win big, gaining up to a quarter of the assembly. The Shiite bloc fragments. The religious Shiite parties suffer significant defections by urban, educated, and more secular Shiites, who opt instead for the party led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and other, smaller parties. After the election, the Shiite bloc falls apart, as the radical faction of rebel cleric Muqtada Al Sadr goes its own way, further weakening Al Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. A two-thirds majority in parliament emerges among religious Sunnis, secular Sunnis, Allawi and the Kurds--enough to force the SCIRI-Dawa forces to come to the table and talk about a brand new constitution with a strengthened, more centralized state, a smaller role for Islamic Sharia law, and a fairer distribution of oil revenues. And finally, the parties agree to peace talks with the armed resistance, including a ceasefire and amnesty for fighters and for prisoners. Central to the deal, the new Iraqi government demands a six-month timetable for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq. The new government takes office in late January, and, as planned, in February the Arab League convenes Phase II of the peace process that began in Cairo in mid-November, this time in Baghdad, giving international and Arab approval to the new Iraqi concord. Together, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish police hunt down the remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq throughout 2006.
Scenario Two: For whatever reason, Sunni candidates fail to win a fair share of seats in the new parliament. The religious Shiite coalition--SCIRI, Al Dawa and the Sadrists--not only win big, but through ballot-stuffing, vote fraud, and help from Iran's intelligence service, gain enough power to continue their grip on power. The Kurds opt to ally once again with the Shiites. The U.S. military begins to draw down its forces in Iraq, so that President Bush can win political points at home, and the Shiite militias fill the vacuum left over by the slowly dwindling U.S. force. Sunnis, marginalized politically, fail to muster enough votes to make any changed in the constitution imposed in October by the dominant Shiite-Kurd alliance; frustrated and outraged, the Sunnis support the insurgency with renewed vigor. The Kurds retreat into their northern enclave, the Shiite militia launch a brutal and bloody offensive against the Sunnis, with ethnic cleansing of southern Iraq, and Iraq slides into open civil war. Not only is the Phase II Arab League meeting never held, but the Arab world mobilizes in defense of Iraq's Sunnis, and both Iran and Turkey are drawn into the conflict.
As for the actual scenarios, many analysts have been expressing similar thoughts for months, in terms of the election either being dominated by the fundamentalist Shiites, who represent a large portion of the 60% of Shiites in the country, in alliance with the Kurds, or a surprise showing by the secular US-backed Shiites combined with a healthy Sunni turnout that themselves gains enough votes to ally with the Kurds and stymie the fundamentalist Shiites.
In both cases, whoever can ally with the Kurds to get 1/2 and 2/3 pluralities is going to be the winner, and, despite what Dreyfuss might tell you, it's the fundamentalist Shiites who are the clear favorites (without fraud), and not the US and CIA-backed small group of Shiites. Dreyfuss wants to agree that Scenario 2 is the more likely, but does not want to do so without completely painting such an [unwanted] outcome as illegitimate, which is not really borne by the evidence.
It is this point that represents the interesting info ops and misinformation that Dreyfuss is shopping, which is not only the clear misrepresentation of which is the more likely result from impartial analysis of Iraq's population and leanings, as far as the election outcome, without fraud, but also that only "through ballot-stuffing, vote fraud, and help from Iran's intelligence service, [can religious Shiites] gain enough power to continue their grip on power".
In this, Dreyfuss is dead wrong, as fraud is clearly not necessary at all for the more religiously oriented Shiite lists to win enough votes to ally with the Kurds and win parliament (though of course it could occur). Indeed, many speculate that it would take this very kind of corruptive activity from the US-backed secular Shiites and Sunnis for them to actually gain the outcome of Dreyfuss' Scenario 1, since Sunnis make up at most 20% of the population, and the Shiites have to date clearly leaned towards the religious-oriented lists (shunning Allawi as a U.S. puppet).
Most remarkably, Dreyfuss writes this without even blinking, as if the only possible vote fraud or corruption could come from the religious Shiite side, and the possibility of fraud from any of the other factions, especially from those the U.S. desperately wants to win, is not even worth considering.
To add insult to injury, he backs up this point, which obviously includes villifying Iran, by referencing what looks to be false information generated by U.S. and/or Iraqi information ops, which you would naturally expect Dreyfuss to be wary of, though in this case he was citing a NY Times story and was not yet aware that the story would be roundly denied by the chief of Iraqi border forces (though we should always take with a grain of salt any such denials when the Shiites are in power, there really is no reason to believe the NY Times account either, which is based upon a single source, and which clearly seeks to put a bad mark on the Iranian and non-secular Shiites - i.e. has the all the earmarks of black ops).
In short, I want to make three points:
One, all sides are equally liable to stuff ballots and engage in voter fraud, until I am given a good reason (with evidence) not to believe this to be the case, especially when U.S. foreign policy is so desperate to have any of the parties but the one being accused of wanting to steal the election make a good showing.
Two, Dreyfuss' Scenario 2 is not more likely due to voter fraud and Iranian ballot stuffing, but because of the actual makeup of the Iraqi population, combined with the fact that Allawi and the other U.S. and CIA-supported secular Shiites have very little credibility.
Three, do not believe anything the NY Times writes based upon a single or handful of anonymous sources in the Iraqi government. Such is the essence of naivete.