{"id":1952,"date":"2005-10-25T22:16:40","date_gmt":"2005-10-26T02:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.test.bradblog.com\/?p=1952"},"modified":"2005-10-25T22:16:40","modified_gmt":"2005-10-26T02:16:40","slug":"millions-of-iraqis-believe-attacks-on-us-and-british-troops-are-justified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=1952","title":{"rendered":"Millions of Iraqis Believe Attacks on U.S. and British Troops Are Justified"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/a>45% of Iraqis believe that attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, and 82% are “strongly opposed” to the continued presence of “coalition” troops, according to a “secret poll” conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team. Results of the poll have been leaked to Britain’s Sunday Telegraph<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Astute readers may recognize some of these conclusions after seeing articles on the weekend from Reuters or Yahoo. But Saturday’s report from Reuters<\/a> barely scratched the surface, and Yahoo did only a bit better on Sunday<\/a>. <\/p>\n

For the full report, you have to go to the source: Secret MoD poll: Iraqis support attacks on British troops<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Among the survey’s other conclusions:<\/p>\n

\u2022 less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;<\/p>\n

\u2022 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;<\/p>\n

\u2022 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;<\/p>\n

\u2022 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.<\/p><\/div>\n

But aside from all this “security” nonsense, things are going pretty well, right? <\/p>\n

Um … no!<\/p>\n

The opinion poll, carried out in August, also debunks claims by both the US and British governments that the general well-being of the average Iraqi is improving in post-Saddam Iraq.<\/p>\n

The findings differ markedly from a survey carried out by the BBC in March 2004 in which the overwhelming consensus among the 2,500 Iraqis questioned was that life was good. More of those questioned supported the war than opposed it.
\n…
\nImmediately after the war the coalition embarked on a campaign of reconstruction in which it hoped to improve the electricity supply and the quality of drinking water.<\/p>\n

That appears to have failed, with the poll showing that 71 per cent of people rarely get safe clean water, 47 per cent never have enough electricity, 70 per cent say their sewerage system rarely works and 40 per cent of southern Iraqis are unemployed.<\/p><\/div>\n

Any wingnut will tell you that these very inconvenient facts don’t matter much, because they are only temporary, and the situation will surely change because we have brought “democracy” to Iraq, complete with a historic new “constitution”. <\/p>\n

However …<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The recent constitutional referendum appears to have been not only a farce, with millions of voters unable to read the proposed constitution before voting on it, but a fraudulent one as well, as reported by the intrepid Dahr Jamail:<\/p>\n

\u201cElections\u201d and other Deceptions in Iraq<\/a><\/p>\n

Just before Saturday’s so-called constitutional referendum vote in occupied Iraq, one of my close friends in Baghdad wrote me, \u201cI would like to point out that we are three days away from the referendum, yet very large sectors of Iraqi people couldn’t receive part of the five million copies [of the constitution] from the UN, ie- they will not know what the constitution contains. Subsequently, they will vote according to their backgrounds or religious or political preferences. Many people who will vote yes do not know why they will vote yes…what kind of vote is this?\u201d<\/div>\n

A good question, isn’t it? Dahr Jamail goes on to answer it:<\/p>\n

The vote had many similarities to the farce which took place on January 30 — aside from a repeat of the draconian measures to provide security and quite a large dose of propaganda; we once again have what already appears to be rampant election fraud.<\/p>\n

Figures provided by several governorates have required Iraq’s independent electoral commission (IEC) to order … \u201cre-examination, comparison and verification because they [voter turnout figures] are relatively high compared with international averages for elections\u201d of this kind; according to a statement made by the IEC on Monday [October 17th].<\/p>\n

This occurred rather inconveniently after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s nearly instantaneous belief that the constitution \u201chas probably been passed.\u201d
\n…
\nHuge discrepancies are already reported in the Nineveh governorate, which includes Mosul, showing that while sources close to the IEC were quoted saying that 55% of the voters there voted against the constitution, Abd al-Razaq al-Jiburi, the secretary general of the Iraqi Independent Front said, \u201cI have been informed by an employee of the electoral high commission in Mosul that the voting for the constitution has been \u2018no.’\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to add that his sources within the IEC said the \u201cno\u201d vote in Nineveh ranged between 75-80%.<\/p><\/div>\n

Well… What difference does it make, really? Whether the “no” vote is 55% or 75%, it’s all the same, isn’t it? <\/p>\n

No! Not at all! Because in this case, the critical number is not 50%, but 67%.<\/p>\n

This is a critical governorate vote, with Diyala and Salahedin governorates already appearing to have decisively rejected the constitution, despite US military repression with ongoing operations there, as well as in other predominantly Sunni governorates.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that the draft constitution can be rejected by a 2\/3 \u201cno\u201d vote occurring in three governorates.<\/p><\/div>\n

Are you expected to understand all this? No. You’re not even supposed to know about it. <\/p>\n

How many people in the US will actually understand what is happening in Iraq regarding this referendum vote? Most likely not many when we consider the ongoing machinations occurring in US mainstream media outlets. One of my friends in Baghdad who is working by gathering information for one of these sources wrote me recently, \u201cBy the way, I asked them to omit my name as a contributor to their articles because the journalists they have writing them are not accurately reporting the views of Iraqis on the ground.\u201d<\/div>\n

Personally, I get bored with all the statistics. The percentages really don’t grab me in the same way as the eyewitness accounts, such as the following story, from the same post<\/a> from Dahr Jamail:<\/p>\n

[In Ramadi, on October 17th], residents claimed that several people, including children, were congregating around the site where a US military vehicle was destroyed and five soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on election day.<\/p>\n

US warplanes conducted a strike on the crowd of two dozen people which had gathered to look at the wreckage and strip it for scrap metal. The military claimed that they were setting another roadside bomb in the same location.<\/p>\n

Dr. Bassem al-Dulaimi at the main hospital reported that he received 25 dead bodies which were the result of US aerial bombings. Other doctors and Iraqi police officers reported that the dead were all civilians, including children.<\/p>\n

At least 14 other Iraqis were killed in US air strikes on a nearby village.<\/p>\n

The US army stated that the air strikes conducted by US warplanes and helicopters killed 70 \u201cterrorists\u201d during the air strikes in Ramadi and surrounding locales, and also said that not one civilian was killed due to their use of precision weapons.<\/p>\n

Another doctor at Ramadi General Hospital who was tending to the dead and wounded told reporters, \u201cThey are not terrorists. They were ordinary people who were bombed by airplanes.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Shocking? Not at all. I don’t even find it surprising anymore. <\/p>\n

The only real surprise to me was the number of Iraqis who support attacks against the occupying armies. I didn’t expect it to be 45%. I thought it would be much higher. And it probably will be, sooner than you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot 45% of Iraqis believe that attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, and 82% are “strongly opposed” to the continued presence of “coalition” troops, according to a “secret poll” conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team. Results of the poll have been leaked to Britain’s Sunday Telegraph. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1952"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=1952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}