February 19, 2005

Deadly Blasts Target Shiites in Baghdad

Many kneeling in prayer, Shiite Muslims were attacked in their mosques and on the streets Friday on the eve of their holiest day, with five bombings killing 36 people in the deadliest day in Iraq since the Jan. 30 national elections.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts — three of them suicide attacks — in Baghdad and Iskandariyah, south of the capital. But Shiites blamed radical Sunni Muslim insurgents,
[Note: Al-Presseera is still calling the killers "insurgents."--Jen]
who have staged car bombs, shootings and kidnappings to try to destabilize Iraq's reconstruction.

"Those infidel Wahhabis, those Usama bin Laden followers, they did this because they hate Shiites," said Sari Abdullah, a worshipper at Baghdad's al-Khadimain mosque who was injured by shrapnel from the explosion. "They are afraid of us. They are not Muslims. They are infidels."
[Mr. Abdullah has it exactly right--this is the Enemy, although the Iranian mullahs are Shi'ites and they also ascribe to this death cult.]
[...]

Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, the national security adviser for the interim government, accused Jordanian-born terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and former Baath party members of trying to provoke a sectarian civil war.

"It's a paradoxical idea when they claim that they are fighting the infidels and at the same time, they kill Muslims during Friday prayers," he said.

He said Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the population, would not call for retaliation against the minority Sunnis who were favored by Saddam Hussein's regime.

I am happy and proud of the people's reactions," al-Rubaie said. "Those who lost their sons and relatives didn't call for retaliation against Sunnis, which reflects their awareness and understanding of what is going on."
[Good for them!
I hope this is more widespread than just these few men quoted.]

Walid Al-Hilly, a leading figure of the Shiite-led Dawa Party, said the attacks would not stop the Shiites from trying to cooperate with Sunnis and other minorities in a new government.
[That's the spirit!]

"They kill unarmed men, women and children who want to glorify the ceremonies of Ashoura. These terrorist actions will not intimidate us nor make us change the way that we choose freedom from tyranny and oppression," he told Al-Jazeera television.
[You know, in that this went out all over the Arab world on Al Jizzeera, I can't help but think that statements like these make quite an impact on the "Arab street.--Jen]
"We chose the path of brotherhood, cooperation and unity between Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Shabak, Turkomen and Christians and all other sects."
[...]
Friday's attacks on Shiites began with two suicide bombings outside mosques in predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

The first explosion at the al-Khadimain mosque killed 15, while the second, at al-Bayaa, took 10 more lives, an official at Baghdad's al-Yarmouk Hospital said on condition of anonymity. The al-Khadimain bombing occurred just outside the entrance to the mosque as people were still inside praying. The al-Bayaa attack also took place outside the mosque, as prayers were about to end.
[Notice how the bad guys refuse to respect the "holy" nature of these mosques, the way our troops do.
And notice also that the MSM doesn't point out the "holiness" of the Muslim sites like they do when our troops are involved.]

Another explosion hit a Shiite religious procession, killing two and injuring five, according to Iraqi police Lt. Waed Hussein. A fourth attack, involving a suicide bomber, struck an Iraqi police and National Guard checkpoint in a Sunni neighborhood, killing at least one policeman.

Later Friday, a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in Iskandariyah — 30 miles south of the capital — where hundreds had gathered, killing eight people and wounding 10, doctors said.
[...]
A little known insurgent group, the Mujahedeen in Iraq, released a videotape showing two Indonesian journalists who disappeared Feb. 8. The group threatened to kill them if the Indonesian government did not explain why the journalists were in Iraq.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appealed for the release of 26-year-old reporter Meutya Viada Hafid and Budiyanto, 36, a cameraman.

Isn't it a strange world where CNN's Eason Jordan can complain that U.S. soldiers were targeting journalists (when they most certainly weren't and wouldn't) and yet men like him never hold the IslamoNazis responsible for their overt targeting of journalists?
Update: Jabba the Tutt emails:

What we don't have is any outrage by Moslem around the world.  An American puts panties on the head of a prisoner and it's the end of the world.  Moslems are slaughtered without a peep.

 Just another reason why the Left, the professional Moslem apologists, the
anti-American elites worldwide have no credibility with the vast majority of Americans.

Precisely!
Good thing President Bush, 61 million Americans, the Iraqis and the U.S. military don't pay them any mind.

February 17, 2005

Negroponte Selected As Intelligence Chief

President Bush named John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the government's first national intelligence director Thursday, turning to a veteran diplomat to revive a spy community besieged by criticism after the Sept. 11 attacks.
[Actually, they've been asleep at the wheel for much longer than that, going back to at least the first WTC bombing in 1993.--Jen]

Ending a nine-week search, Bush chose Negroponte, who has been in Iraq for less than a year, for the difficult job of implementing the most sweeping intelligence overhaul in 50 years.

Negroponte, 65, is tasked with bringing together 15 highly competitive spy agencies and learning to work with the combative Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the brand new CIA Director Porter Goss and other intelligence leaders. He'll oversee a covert
[If it's "covert," how does the AP know about it??--J.T.]
intelligence budget estimated at $40 billion.
[...]
Bush signaled that he sees Negroponte as the man to steer his intelligence clearinghouse. "If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise," Bush said.
[...]
Bush also announced he had chosen an intelligence insider to serve as Negroponte's deputy, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the National Security Agency's director since 1999. As the longest-serving head of the secretive codebreaking and eavesdropping agency, Hayden pushed for change by asking some longtime personnel to retire and increasing reliance on technology contractors.

For years, blue-ribbon commissions have proposed creating a single, powerful director to oversee the entire intelligence community, but the concept didn't gain momentum until recommended by the independent Sept. 11 Commission.

Bush and other senior administration officials initially resisted, but reversed course after an exceptional lobbying effort by the families of 9/11 attack victims. Congress approved the new post in December as part of the most significant intelligence overhaul since 1947.
[...since the OSS was made over into the CIA?]

Yet intelligence veterans remain concerned about whether the job will wield enough power to lead government elements that handle everything from recruiting spies to eavesdropping to steering satellites.

Some say the authorities of the intelligence chief are too ambiguous as established in the legislation. The position was also excluded from the Cabinet to shield it from politics, requiring Negroponte to work directly with more senior personalities such as Rumsfeld.
[...]
Bush has trusted Negroponte with trying assignments. He was ambassador to the U.N. when U.S. relations with the world organization were declining over the approaching Iraq invasion.
[Isn't the U.N. pathetic?
All the U.S. was trying to do was to enforce the U.N.'s own resolutions against Saddam!]
Last year, Bush sent him to Iraq as ambassador during the middle of a bloody insurgency.

Negroponte has held official posts in eight countries, including ambassadorships in Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines. He also understands the intelligence demands of policy-makers, serving in President Reagan's National Security Council from 1987 to 1989.

Given his C.V. and from what I can tell about the man from his record over the past few years, I'd say that Negroponte is infinitely qualified to be a CEO of any major concern.
In that a lot of his career has been spent in various State Dept. positions, this will be his biggest obstacle unless and until Dr. Rice decides to clean house over there (which I look for her to do!).
This new intell chief position will either be the solution to alot of our terror problems, particularly the domestic ones, or it will be a nightmare of just one more Washington über-bureaucracy that gives a lot of folks civil service jobs without solving any of our country's problems.
Negroponte must be able to climb the Gorelick Wall and confront the intell we have, not the intell he'd wish to have as our government agencies did before 9/11 and are still doing to some extent even as we are 3 and 1/2 years into the war.
I've spent the last couple of weeks reading books about the real story behind the OKC bombing, the crash of TWA 800, the first WTC bombing and the many links between Saddam's Iraq and Al Queda (if not with the 9/11 attacks, too).
Virtually every one of these incidents in which hundreds of Americans died involved a great degree of cover-up and tone-deafness on the part of the FBI caused by the virtual refusal to recognize Islamist terrorism (often funded and even manned by Iraqis) as the source of the attacks by the Clinton Administration.
What's important is that this President has the political will to fight terror.
Now if Negroponte and Rice can get the State Dept. to put the U.S.A first and to work with a firm belief in American Exceptionalism, we might be in a position to get a jump on the bad guys, both at home and abroad!

For further reading about what really happened, you owe it to yourself as an informed citizen to read:
Laurie Mylroie's Bush vs. The Beltway: How the CIA and the State Dept. Tried to stop the War on Terror
Jayna Davis's The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing
Steven Hayes's The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America
Jack Cashill's First Strike : TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America

Bush Tells Syria to Quit Lebanon

President Bush called on Syria on Thursday to withdraw its forces from Lebanon as Lebanese opposition leaders vowed to topple the country's pro-Syrian leadership.

Pressure has been piling up on Syria and its Lebanese allies since Monday's killing of former premier Rafik al-Hariri, the country's most influential politician, in a suspected car bombing that many Lebanese blame on Damascus.

Bush said Syria should adhere to a U.N. resolution demanding its troops leave Lebanon and should allow an election scheduled for May to be free and fair.
[Freedom continues to be on the march in the Middle East!--Jen]

Bush recalled the U.S. ambassador to Syria this week in reaction to the bombing.[...]
[...]
Voices from across Lebanon's various ethnic and religious communities, encouraged by the tough anti-Syrian stance of the United States and France,
[Yep! France is with us this time because they're willing to go to the mat for Lebanon.--J.T.]
are now telling Damascus and its local allies it is time to go.

"The day will come when we will get brooms and sweep away this dirt, the criminal authority, the terrorist authority," Druze leader Walid Jumblatt told reporters at Hariri's house. "This day will come soon and all of the Lebanese people will rise and send them to hell."
[...]
Lebanese newspapers said Wednesday's scenes of grief and anger among more than 150,000 mourners in the streets of Beirut amounted to a national referendum against Syria's military and political influence over its smaller neighbor.

"Hariri's funeral was a huge vote for unity and sovereignty," read the headline in Beirut's leading newspaper, An-Nahar.
[...]
For most of his dozen years in and out of the premiership, Hariri had toed Syria's line -- until resentment over Syrian insistence on extending the term of his political rival, President Emile Lahoud, prompted him to quit in October.

In a pointed snub, Hariri's family told top government officials to stay clear of the funeral of the ebullient Sunni Muslim former prime minister.

Al-Hariri was going to win that election in May and try to take more steps towards Lebanese sovereignity as premier and that's why Assad had him offed.
To grasp the situation more fully, NRO's Cliff May points us to today's op ed in the NYSlimes by Tom Friedman:
"Hama Rules"

As a dues-paying member of the Bushie Neocon VRWC™, I usually have an allergic reaction to Friedman, but May's right; it's a darn good analysis by an expert on the region, for once!
Further, it seems to support President Bush's policy of replacing Islamist tyranny and terrorism for democracy:

[...]
When Syria's Baath regime feels its back up against the wall, it always resorts to "Hama Rules." Hama Rules is a term I coined after the Syrian Army leveled - and I mean leveled - a portion of its own city, Hama, to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982. Some 10,000 to 20,000 Syrians were buried in the ruble. Monday's murder of Mr. Hariri, a self-made billionaire who devoted his money and energy to rebuilding Lebanon after its civil war, had all the hallmarks of Hama Rules - beginning with 650 pounds of dynamite to incinerate an armor-plated motorcade.

Message from the Syrian regime to Washington, Paris and Lebanon's opposition: "You want to play here, you'd better be ready to play by Hama Rules - and Hama Rules are no rules at all. You want to squeeze us with Iraq on one side and the Lebanese opposition on the other, you'd better be able to put more than U.N. resolutions on the table. You'd better be ready to go all the way - because we will. But you Americans are exhausted by Iraq, and you Lebanese don't have the guts to stand up to us, and you French make a mean croissant but you've got no Hama Rules in your arsenal. So remember, we blow up prime ministers here. We shoot journalists. We fire on the Red Cross. We leveled one of our own cities. You want to play by Hama Rules, let's see what you've got. Otherwise, hasta la vista, baby."
[...]
What else can the Lebanese do? They must unite all their communities and hit the Syrian regime with "Baghdad Rules," which were demonstrated 10 days ago by the Iraqi people. Baghdad Rules are when an Arab public does something totally unprecedented: it takes to the streets, despite the threat of violence from jihadists and Baathists, and expresses its democratic will.

Rafik Hariri stopped playing by "Lebanese Rules" - eating any crow the Syrians crammed down Lebanon's throat - and openly challenged Syrian imperialism. If the Lebanese want to be free, they have got to take the lead. They have to summon the same civic courage that Mr. Hariri did and that the Iraqi public did - the courage to look the fascists around them in the eye, call them in the press and in public by their real names, and confront the European Union and the Arab League for their willingness to ignore the Syrian oppression.
[Don't forget the U.N.!
When it comes to condemning Syria for their occupation of Lebanon, they've been MIA yet again.--Jen]
[...]
Baghdad Rules mean the Lebanese giving the Syrian regime - every day, everywhere - the purple finger.

We can only hope!
It remains to be seen how far Assad will go to keep Lebanon in his grip and how much President Bush will tolerate, but it may take more than just purple fingers to get Syrian troops out of Lebanon.
Let's pray we don't find out the hard way that Syria/Lebanon isn't where Saddam's WMDs went.
I'm proud to say that President Bush issued his directive that Syria leave Lebanon after this announcement earlier this morning:
Syria, Iran form 'united front
Of course, these 2 have been aligned long before today, Syria allowing Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah to have the run of the place.
And how they plan to reach across Free Iraq is beyond me, but this kind of bellicosity and defensiveness seems to make them feel more secure, especially the nutty Moo-las in Iran.

Greenspan sees success in gradual rate hikes policy

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said Wednesday the economy is in good shape but warned that Americans urgently needed to save more -- and he endorsed the idea of private accounts as part of Social Security reform.

(H/T to the incomparable Roger L. Simon, who we hope is recovering nicely from last week's gall bladder surgery.)

The Fed chairman also indicated the central bank would continue to raise interest rates gradually.

Greenspan waded into one of the more contentious issues facing Congress coming out in favor of fundamental changes in the Social Security system, but he urged caution. The Fed chief said the move toward private accounts should be gradual to limit borrowing needed to keep benefit payments, while payroll taxes are diverted into the new accounts.

And under questioning by Democrats, he conceded that private accounts by themselves would not boost the nation's saving rate. But he said that not making changes to Social Security was risky and not sustainable. Once the transition costs are paid for, a Social Security system with an individual account element would add to the net national savings rate, said Greenspan, which would strengthen the economy and help retirees.

He urged action before 2008 to prepare Social Security for the coming wave of retiring "baby boomers," and said separately it was "imperative to restore fiscal discipline" in the United States to help narrow the nation's huge trade deficit.

Uh-oh!
Looks like the Dimocrats are going to have to think of something else to do to block President Bush!
Might I suggest another candlelight vigil around the statue of FDR?
Surely, a bunch of Dim senators and congresspersons weeping and chanting "We miss you! Come back to us!" to the sculpture of the 4-term Dem demigod Prez would conjure up their lockbox from the ether and fix the SSA problems before the whole Ponzi scheme goes bankrupt.

(H/T to Roger L Simon, who is recovering from emergency gall bladder surgery. Take care of yourself, Rog--you're the top!)

February 15, 2005

Here's the story from al-Reuters (but I don't believe I've seen the WashingtonTimes carry their news before):
Assassination in Beirut

A huge car bomb yesterday killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a billionaire who masterminded his country's reconstruction but resigned four months ago amid tensions with Syria.
    
At least nine others, including several of Mr. al-Hariri's bodyguards, died when his motorcade was blown up as it passed through an exclusive section of Beirut's seafront.

Former Economy Minister Basil Fuleihan, also riding in the convoy, was critically wounded in the blast, the biggest in Lebanon since the end of the nation's 1975-90 civil war. At least 100 other persons were injured, officials said.

The United States condemned the killing and said it would consult with members of the United Nations Security Council about how to punish Mr. al-Hariri's killers and get Syrian troops out of Lebanon.
    
Lebanese opposition figures, including Druze party chief Walid Jumblatt and Christian ex-President Amin Gemayel, blamed Syrian and Lebanese authorities for Mr. al-Hariri's death and called on the government to resign. Syrian officials condemned the killing and denied any role.
[...]
A previously unknown Islamist group said in a video aired by < b>Al Jazeera television that it had carried out a suicide attack against Mr. al-Hariri because he supported the Saudi royal family.
[Perhaps, but I doubt it. I'm going with Assad's boys myself, too.--Jen]
    
Hours later, Lebanese security forces stormed the Beirut home of a Palestinian who they said had read the statement on the video. A security source said Ahmed Aboul Adef was not in the house.

Opposition figures, who convened an emergency meeting after the assassination, called a three-day general strike and demanded the withdrawal of Syrian forces, which have been in Lebanon since the civil war.
[And if I'm not mistaken, they're under some kind of U.N. "truce" situation, too. Figures, doesn't it?--J.T.]

    Lebanese voices calling for Damascus to pull out its 14,000 troops have grown louder, backed by a Security Council resolution last year.
[After President Bush and British PM Blair made sure that those U.N. resolutions against Saddam were most definitely enforced, maybe this gesture has some teeth in it to curb the world's despots like Assad. Here's hoping!]

Protesters gathered outside the Lebanon headquarters of Syria's ruling Ba'ath Party and accused Damascus of plotting the killing. They pelted the building with stones, burned pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and set tires on fire.
    
Mr. al-Hariri had remained politically influential since his resignation and recently joined the opposition calls for Syria to quit Lebanon before parliamentary elections later this year.
[Wow! First we have elections in Paleostine and Iraq, then Soddy Arabia, and now Lebanon/Syria and Egypt, too.
Freedom is on the march in the Middle East, albeit slowly and quietly.
This is all because we invaded Iraq, régime-changed Saddam, and made democratic elections there possible thus making the whole region "unstable."
As we neocon RW warmongers told you before we launched OIF, this instability is a feature not a bug!--Jen]
[...]

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said yesterday that he was "shocked" by the news of Mr. al-Hariri's assassination, but that he doubted Syria was behind the killing.
[Well, he would, wouldn't he?]
    "It would be too obvious," Mr. Gheit told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "I just do not think the [Syrian government] would throw down the gauntlet to the world in this manner."
[Then again, Mr. Gheit, they might.]
    
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Washington would consult with other governments on measures that could be taken to punish those responsible for the blast.
    
In a barely veiled reference to Syria, he said international pressure was needed "to restore Lebanon's independence, sovereignty and democracy by freeing it from foreign occupation."
   
 France joined the United States in calling for an international investigation.
[Well, lookee here!
The Frogs are with us!
That's because they consider Lebanon to be one of their remaining colonies in the French empire.
Oh, well, there's room for them in this boat, I suppose.]

Mr. al-Hariri, 60, had held office for most of the past 12 years before quitting in October amid a rift with Mr. Lahoud.
   
 Mr. al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, spent about 20 years in Saudi Arabia, where construction deals made him a fortune that Forbes estimated at $3.8 billion in 2003.

Poor Mr. al-Hariri's billions couldn't save his life--Allah rest him!
I'm sure this car bomb is only the opening salvo for the mini-war that most likely will and must go on to bring about the Democratic Reformation in Lebanon and Syria.
Before this year, Damascus had relied on the "buffer zone" of the Paleostinian areas, not to mention Saddam's Iraq, to protect them while they nurtured Sunni Islamist terrorism, murder and genocide--inter alia, they could fire at the Israelis in the Bekka Valley with impunity.
Syria must get its troops and its influence out of Lebanon (which used to be made up primarily of Christians and Jews before Arafat Islamicized it by waging his jihadi war there) and the Syrian people need to exercise their human liberty to be free of the rule of Baby Assad, the eye doctor.
Keep the popcorn kernels ready: this will probably get very interesting, very quickly.

February 14, 2005

A Newly Meaningful Relationship?

Romance is in the air today across the land. But in Washington, the buzz continues about "The Kiss." No, not Gustav Klimt's famous painting.
[Actually, I think he's thinking about Rodin's statue "The Kiss," but the Klimt painting is very nice!]
It's the big fat one an exuberant President Bush planted on Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's right cheek as he waded through the Capitol crowd after the State of the Union a couple of weeks ago.

The Connecticut Democrat said he didn't mind it and thought Bush was thanking him for his support of the administration's foreign policy. Or maybe it was for Lieberman's not dismissing outright Bush's Social Security proposal.

Or maybe it was something else. There's been K Street chatter, our colleague Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
[Birnbaum's a Dem loser who's a secret Bushie wannabe and no, I don't care if he's on FoxNews!--Jen]
tells us, that Lieberman could be on an administration list to replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the next year or so.
[BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The Dimocrats wish!]

That would be convenient for Lieberman, whose term is up in 2006, and could give Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R) an opportunity to appoint a Republican to the seat for at least a few months before the election, inching the GOP closer to a filibuster-proof Senate.

Or maybe it's just love?

Trust me, it's just love.
President Bush is a loving guy!
He's not going have Rummy resign because he's done a superb job as Secretary of Defense and won 2 campaigns in the WOT already!
And Joe Lieberman's a nice man (for a Democrat) and his heart and his head are in the right place, but he can't be trusted with a position like this, especially now when the war's at a critical juncture.
(What does Joe really know about the being the head dude at the Pentagon?)
The boys at the WashedUpPost are obviously smoking the primo weed and having their opium reveries of "their" people being gently placed in the Bush Administration...clearly, it's not because the Dems are going to get back into power by being elected!
(BTW, isn't this the 2nd time the MSM has run this "story" about Lieberman being Bush's SecDef up the flagpole?
No-one's saluting this time, either.)
I found this at Drudge--where else?
He picks up every weird pro-Democrat story there is, even though he's supposed to be a "Conservative!"

Dean Vows to Revamp Party
I'm not going to cite any of the article or parse/Frisk any of Howlin' Howard's latest sound bytes because I don't have a strong enough stomach.
I really, really don't like this man.
I didn't like him when he was running for President in 2003 and screamed, "I want my country back!," as he did this at a time when we Conservatives felt that we were finally begin to get our country back from Liberals like Howard Dean and Bill Cllinton.
Now that he's announced that he "hates Republicans and all they stand for," we really know who we're dealing with and it's not pretty.
(Why isn't this "hate speech?"
Democrats are always the first ones to screech that something is "hate speech!"
But noooooooooo.
They make this lunatic head of the party.)
It's clear to all of us that by choosing Dean as the head of the DNC, the Democrat Party has taken an irreversible lurch to the Left.
This will not win them elections--Thank God!
Now, if they'd had some sense and brains and made former Sen. Zell Miller head of the party, I might feel a little better and hope that the Democrats were headed back to being the "loyal opposition."
I really don't care much what the Democrats do, but I do care that since 9/11, they've been working against my President and his Administration and against my country when we're at war--this is unacceptable.
If we're going to win this war, then something's gonna have to give.
As for the Dems, they will continue to lose elections as long as their platform is so ideologically and morally bankrupt and their "ideas" are so reactionary--Bush- and Republican-hate isn't a platform.
Class warfare, racism, higher taxes, the murder of babies in the womb, "gay" "marriage," "global warming" and letting the U.N. handle all international problems aren't compelling answers to "pressing" issues, either.
Zell told them what they need to do, what they should stand for and whom they should emulate, FDR, JFK and Truman, not Carter and Clinton.
As long as Howard thinks that the way to win votes is to be overbearing, boorish, and anti-American they'll continue to be the American political party on the road to mass suicide.
I wonder how long he'll last?
I long for the days when the head of the DNC was a quiet, but loyal party man like Dallas's own Robert Strauss.

Shi'ite alliance tops vote in Iraq

A Shi'ite alliance endorsed by the nation's top cleric will command a narrow majority in Iraq's new national assembly, according to final results released yesterday from the historic Jan. 30 elections.
   
 A coalition of Kurdish parties placed second with about one-quarter of the seats and will be a crucial power broker in the 275-seat assembly, which will name a government and write a permanent constitution. Both actions require agreement by a two-thirds majority.

A secular party led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi came a disappointing third with about 15 percent of the seats, and President Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer's secular Sunni party got five seats.
[I'm sure there was lots of talk that Allawi was the "American puppet," even though I don't think that's really the case.
I'd like to see him retain a major leadership role in whatever government comes next because I think he governs fairly and in the interest of all Iraqis.
He "gets" the whole democracy thing.--J.T.]
[...]
Shi'ite leaders, however, quickly promised to find ways to include willing Sunnis in drafting a constitution.
    
"Iraqis want freedom and democracy," said Hussein Shahrestani, a Canadian-educated nuclear scientist who played a key role in creating the winning United Iraqi Alliance.

We are even more insistent now than before that [the government] should be an exercise of unity and participation. We need a government of national unity."
   
 In Washington, President Bush congratulated the Iraqi people "for defying terrorist threats and setting their country on the path of democracy and freedom...."]
[...]

 Ayatollah al-Sistani, who has a huge following in the Shi'ite world, had mandated participation in the elections through a fatwa, or religious edict considered the equivalent of the word of God.
    
In northern Iraq, the Kurdish coalition, made up of former — and sometimes deadly — rivals handily won the polling in the northern city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich region populated by an uneasy mix of Turkmen, Kurds and Arabs.
    
News footage showed major celebrations by the Kurds, who are intent on claiming Kirkuk as their capital, despite strong pressure from neighboring countries and the United States.
[I'm not sure how "intent" they are on this--and the MSM, even the Washington Times, is always looking for trouble over there--but the Kurds have proved surprisingly cooperative since we initiated OIF and I hope that Kurdish independence will be no exception.--Jen]
    
Led by Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the Kurds are demanding the office of president or prime minister and will seek a high degree of autonomy in the new constitution.

The United Iraqi Alliance also has insisted on choosing one of its own for the post of prime minister — where real political power will lie — though it is not clear which of its faction leaders would get the nod.
   
 Under Iraq's interim constitution, two-thirds of the assembly must agree on a president and two vice presidents. This presidential council, in turn, will name the prime minister and a Cabinet.
    
That means the alliance will have to make a deal with either the Kurds or with Mr. Allawi's group and one or two minor parties to secure the 184 assembly seats needed to name the government.
   
 Efforts also will have to be made to find a role for the Sunnis, who make up about 20 percent of the population, if the new government hopes to end a sense of disenfranchisement that is feeding the insurgency.

Sunni feelings of "disenfranchisement" aside, it sounds as if the Iraqi election went pretty smoothly.
Don't they sound a lot like our Democrats?
It's no surprise that the Shi'ites got the lion's share of the votes as they make up such a large part of the Iraqi population.
Good for the Kurds also that their candidates did so well, also in proportion to the percentage of Kurds in Iraq.
What's important is that the Iraqi voters themselves are happy with the process and perceive it to be accurate and fair and I'd say that definitely was the case!
Long live the new Free Iraq and now it's on to the Iraqi version of the Continental Congress!