Playing Politics

Juan Cole gets it right in citing this CSM article about the upcoming Iraqi "election:"

As with the Jan. 30 elections, the Dec. 15 elections are not being held in accordance with international standards of fairness, and cannot be. Proper elections would require that security be provided to voters and candidates. But there is no security. Several candidates have already been assassinated or attacked, and most of the 7000 or so cannot come out in public or they would be killed, too. In many parts of the center-north, voters will have no guarantee of coming home alive. The only way the vote will happen at all is that the US military has forbidden all vehicular traffic, so everyone has to walk for the next few days. This tactic prevents carbombings from disrupting the elections, but it is a desperate measure and not a sign of an election that could be certified as free and fair.

And this interesting story from New Pravda comes courtesy of Needlenose:

Less than two days before nationwide elections, the Iraqi border police seized a tanker on Tuesday that had just crossed from Iran filled with thousands of forged ballots, an official at the Interior Ministry said.

The tanker was seized in the evening by agents with the American-trained border protection force at the Iraqi town of Badra, after crossing at Munthirya on the Iraqi border, the official said. According to the Iraqi official, the border police found several thousand partly completed ballots inside.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the Iranian truck driver told the police under interrogation that at least three other trucks filled with ballots had crossed from Iran at different spots along the border.

Shrub continued his speechifyin road show today, and apparently managed to stop grinding his teeth long enough to play the P.R. game with NBC--but anyone who thinks his Hurricane Katrina of a foreign policy can somehow be salvaged with--yawn--another meaningless election is the proverbial sucker--or just plain stupid.

They can hold elections in Iraq every week, and it won't make a damn bit of difference...well, except that it would piss folks off even more, given the necessity of stopping all traffic and enforcing even more strict curfews to counter insurgent violence (I wonder how THIS country would react to such strictures). No, this charade is merely for domestic consumption, and at least on one level it's working: CNN, in the link above, is trumpeting "improved" ratings for Shrub, which is sort of like asserting that a pile of shit doesn't really stink all that much.

Or, as Carpetbagger Report notes (another hat tip to Needlenose), the dauphin might be the beneficiary of "special" considerations ("special," as in "short bus special"):

To borrow a White House phrase, Bush may very well be benefiting from the soft bigotry of low expectations.

It seems to me that the country has lowered its standards to the extent that the absence of horrible news is enough to give Bush a few extra points in the polls. For many voters, the fact that no Bush administration officials have been arrested in the past few weeks may be a sign that ethics at the White House have improved. The war hasn't gotten noticeably worse. The president hasn't badly flubbed a response to a massive natural disaster lately.

When inescapable headlines are reminding the nation that Bush's presidency is an embarrassing mess, Bush's approval ratings naturally go into a freefall. But maybe a couple of weeks with no obvious new crises is enough to help turn things around for the president. At least a little.

Oh, there'll be lots of bloviating about the "success" of elections--but NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING will change--except the casualty count.