The Adminstration is at it again. First they refuse to set any concrete goals for what they are doing in Iraq, then they set up a random date and defend it as a rabid wolverine defends a scrap of meat and when the goal is near, the try to lower same expectations that they worked so hard to raise in the first place.
According to
MSNBC, the WH is now busy lowering public expactations about the Jan. 30th vote:
Over the past week, administration officials have frequently stressed that the election is only part of a year-long process. "The election is not going to be perfect," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday. "This is the first time Iraqis will be able to freely choose their leaders. It's for a transitional government, and it's only one of three elections that will take place over the course of this year."
Three elections? What are these other elections for? Why didn't the Administration lay the full plan before? That's the first time I heard about this. And if, as feared, the Sunnis will not vote in the first one, who says that they will vote in any other?
According to Prof. Cole's blog:
Allawi: "Pockets" Will not be Able to Vote
Michael Georgy of the Scotsman reports from Baghdad that interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi admitted on Tuesday that "pockets" of Iraq won't be able to vote on January 30 because of poor security. I suspect the pockets amount to about 3 million persons.
Further down he quotes Karim Kawar, Jordan's Embassador to the U.S. as saying that about 40% of the Iraq's population may not be able to vote.
But not to worry the WH already has an answer for this:
"I would . . . really encourage people not to focus on numbers, which in themselves don't have any meaning, but to look on the outcome and to look at the government that will be the product of these elections," a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a White House briefing yesterday. The official highlighted the low voter turnout in U.S. elections as evidence that polling numbers are not essential to legitimacy.
Emphasis mine.
And if not that important, why all the hype? This is yet another example of how the Admistration gets fixated on phantom concepts with little thought on the effect or how to even prosecute them.
As commented in other diaries, it seems that the Bush Administration is not tired of spining everything into a "crissis" only to dwindle them down to mere footnotes once they realize they won't get what they want or can't really deliver what they promised. Will it take another 10,000+ American casualties and over 100,000 Iraqis dead wounder or missing before Americans get tired of this blatant manipulation of their collective physche? Are Americans and Iraqis fighting for a stable, democratic Iraq or to set alight a bloody ethnic driven Civil War?
