And your point is

Saddam Hussein won another seven-year term as Iraq’s president in a referendum, in which he was the sole candidate, taking 100 percent of the vote, the Iraqi leader’s right-hand man announced Wednesday.

All 11,445,638 of the eligible voters cast ballots, said Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, which is Iraq’s key decision-making body.

What is this? I cannot believe that Iraqi citizens are so stupid to elect this man again. I do not think that citizens of Iraq realize that Saddam Hussein is one of the world’s biggest problems.

We (the U.S.) are on the verge of war with Iraq because of Saddam. A war can never bring about anything good, but Saddam seems to think that a war is good.

The poll conducted by the Iraqi Institute for Democracy showed 94.5 percent of Iraqi Kurds questioned said they would not vote for Saddam.

The poll was published Wednesday by the London-based Al Hayat daily, which reported only 64 Kurds said they would vote for Saddam while 129 said they were undecided.

This poll that was conducted apparently means nothing to Iraqi citizens and they did not take this election seriously. If they really just needed someone to run against Saddam, they should have picked up the phone and called me, (445-4511) I would have ran in a heartbeat.

The institute, which is based in the northern Kurdish enclave and calls itself a nonprofit group promoting democracy, said about 3,000 Kurds were questioned Tuesday as Iraqis went to the polls in the referendum.

There are people in Iraq who think electing Saddam to a new term is a good thing.

“This is a day of pride, honor and dignity as Iraqis express their free will to say “yes” to the pinnacle of their glory and loftiness,” Ibrahim said, referring to Saddam.

The vote was widely advertised not only as backing for Saddam but as a rebuke to the United States, which has been pressing in the U.N. Security Council for a resolution that would allow a war to topple Saddam.

Saddam, 65, became president in 1979 in a well-orchestrated transfer of
power within his Baath Party.

American Press Secretary Ari Fleischer captured the moment perfectly.

“Obviously, it’s not a very serious day, not a very serious vote, and nobody places any credibility on it,” Fleischer said in Washington on Tuesday.

I still can’t believe that Saddam was the only person running in the election. Things need to change in Iraq, and they need to change quickly.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 18 2002. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry