The local paper came out with our article this week. Here is is:

The elections held in Iraq at the end of last month are being hailed by the Bush administration as a vindication of the U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq. There are, however, several alternative views of what the Iraqi vote actually means.

A look at mainstream reporting from Iraq over the past two years reveals a fondness for discovering a new “turning point” in the situation in Iraq and the elections were honored with the label this time around.

The first so-called turning point was the capture of Saddam Hussein. This was going to break the back of the insurgency and bring fighting to an end. It did not.

Next we were told that the June 2004 transfer of power to a “sovereign” Iraqi government was “the turning point.” According to this scenario, the insurgency would end once the faces in charge were Iraqi and not American. But it did not end.

Now we’ve been told that the January 2005 elections are the turning point that will stop the insurgency. Once again, the insurgency has continued unabated.

With so many turning points, it’s not surprising that some observers think the U.S. military’s public relations department is spinning in circles. The truth is, each of these “turning points” have been constructed by public relations flacks hoping to garner support for the occupation among U.S. citizens and have never reflected the reality on the ground in Iraq. In fact, for many Iraqis, the elections were a clear refusal of support to continued U.S. occupation of their country.

Writing in the Denver Post on Feb. 3, 2005, Ibrahim Kazerooni wrote:

“Without exception, the Iraqis I talked to inside and outside Iraq saw voting in Sunday’s election as first and foremost a vote for the immediate withdrawal of occupation forces, and second a vote to take control of their day-to-day lives, which have only worsened as a result of the White House’s incompetent mismanagement of Iraq,” wrote Kazerooni, an Iraqi Shiite imam who is currently the director of the Abrahamic Initiative at St. John’s Cathedral in Denver.

“While the Bush administration and the mainstream American media lather themselves in congratulatory self-adulation over the election, let us not forget that it was the threat of full-scale, armed rebellion from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Shiite community that brought about Sunday’s direct election.”

In fact, Bush’s war planners were dragged kicking and screaming into an agreement to hold the January elections at all. According to an Associated Press news story in early 2004, “Al-Sistani, the country’s most influential Shiite leader, has rejected a U.S. formula for transferring power through a provisional legislature selected by 18 regional caucuses, insisting on direct elections instead.”

“The original White House plan was to appoint a constitutional assembly made up of members selected by U.S.-approved committees in regional districts,” Kazerooni wrote. “Seemingly, we have forgotten the hundreds of thousands of Shiites who protested this plan last year in Baghdad and Basra, chanting, ‘No, no to America! Yes, yes to al-Sistani!’ It was only after the White House realized that al-Sistani and the Shiite community were prepared to follow through on their threat that President Bush grudgingly acquiesced to repeated Shiite demands for early, direct elections.”

“Yet, in the same alternate reality that gave us phantom WMDs, bogus Iraqi ties to September 11 and a war that was supposed to cost only $60 billion, the Bush administration and the mainstream media now would have us believe the election was the exclusive work of George Bush,” he wrote.

An article written by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies on February 1, 2005 states in part:

“The U.S.-imposed Transitional Administrative Law, imposed by the U.S. occupation, remains the law of the land even with the new election. Amending that law requires super-majorities of the assembly, as well as a unanimous agreement by the presidency council—almost impossible given the range of constituencies that must be satisfied. Chiefs of key control commissions, including Iraq’s Inspector General, the Commission on Public Integrity, the Communication and Media Commission and others, were appointed by [former U.S. proconsul Paul] Bremer with five-year terms, can only be dismissed ‘for cause.’ The Council of Judges, as well as individual judges and prosecutors, were selected, vetted and trained by the United States occupation, and are dominated by long-time U.S.-backed exiles.”

Among the points made by Bennis are:

• George Bush hopes to be the major victor in this election, using it to claim legitimacy for his occupation of Iraq. This election does not mean that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is legitimate — democracy cannot be imposed at the point of a gun.

• U.S. domination of Iraq’s economic, political and social life will continue through the military occupation and the continuing control of money, the legal system and political patronage.

• The U.S. has a long history of using elections held under conditions of war and occupation to legitimize its illegal wars. The January 2005 elections in Iraq mirror the 1967 election held in South Vietnam, which gave credibility for U.S. audiences to Washington’s puppet government in southeast Asia.

Those Iraqis hoping for a swift end to the U.S. occupation of their country will be sadly disappointed.

“The 40,000+ civilian and military ‘advisers,’ including private contractors and U.S. government officials, seconded to Iraq’s ministries and all public institutions will remain powerful; with the new assembly sending new staff to these ministries, the U.S. ‘advisers’ may hold the institutional memory,” Bennis wrote. “The $16 billion of U.S. taxpayer money not spent in the reconstruction effort (the billions paid to Halliburton, Bechtel and others has come almost entirely out of U.S.-appropriated Iraqi funds), as well as the $50 billion-per-year military costs will become a potential slush fund for the new assembly’s favored projects.”

“The U.S.-backed privatization schemes imposed by former U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer remain in place,” Bennis continued. “The current interim finance minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, touted by the Los Angeles Times as a potential candidate for deputy president or prime minister, recently announced his support for the complete privatization of Iraq’s oil industry.”

The complete privatization of the Iraqi oil industry will open the way for U.S. corporate domination of Iraqi’s oil profits, as well as control over who can purchase Iraqi oil. Clearly, the Bush administration wants an “ownership” society in Iraq that is entirely made up of U.S. owners of Iraqi resources.

Bennis cites an article from The New York Times published Sept. 4, 1967, entitled, “U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83 percent Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror.” That report reads:

“United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government.”

One decade’s “keystone” is another decade’s “turning point.”

In the United States there is growing opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Many antiwar coalitions around the world have called for a weekend of protest to be held March 19 and 20. This will mark the second anniversary of the start of the U.S. military invasion of Iraq. Demonstrations will call for an end to the occupation and to “bring the troops home now!”

Among the coalitions initiating calls for spring protests are the International ANSWER Coalition, Troops Out Now Coalition and United for Peace and Justice.

In Minneapolis, the Iraq Peace Action Coalition will host a protest on Saturday, March 19 under the call of “U.S. Troops Out Now.” The event begins at 1 p.m. in Loring Park near downtown Minneapolis.