Well, looks like its all over with and here is a interesting round-up of the election via the blogosphere. As usual, Captain Ed had some great posts.
First there is the interview with the Forgotten One, John Kerry.
SEN. KERRY: … it is significant that there is a vote in Iraq. But no one in the United States or in the world– and I’m confident of what the world response will be. No one in the United States should try to overhype this election. This election is a sort of demarcation point, and what really counts now is the effort to have a legitimate political reconciliation, and it’s going to take a massive diplomatic effort and a much more significant outreach to the international community than this administration has been willing to engage in. Absent that, we will not be successful in Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe this election will be seen by the world community as legitimate?
SEN. KERRY: A kind of legitimacy–I mean, it’s hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can’t vote and doesn’t vote
It’s funny that all of the jackass liberal’s said this vote would not happen, if it did happen it would be a bloodbath and blah blah blah. Hmmm, what happened today then? 72% voter turnout, Iraqi’s walking for miles to vote, Iraqi women voting.
Iraqis embraced democracy in large numbers Sunday, standing in long lines to vote in defiance of mortar attacks, suicide bombers and boycott calls. Pushed in wheelchairs or carts if they couldn’t walk, the elderly, the young and women in veils cast ballots in Iraq’s first free election in a half-century.
…Yet the mere fact the vote went off seemed to ricochet instantly around a world hoping for Arab democracy and fearing Islamic extremism.
“I am doing this because I love my country, and I love the sons of my nation,” said Shamal Hekeib, 53, who walked with his wife 20 minutes to a polling station near his Baghdad home.
“We are Arabs, we are not scared and we are not cowards,” Hekeib said.
…In the so-called “triangle of death” south of Baghdad, a whiskery, stooped Abed Hunni walked an hour with his wife to reach a polling site in Musayyib. “God is generous to give us this day,” he said.
…”Now I feel that Saddam is really gone,” said Fatima Ibrahim, smiling as she headed home after voting in Irbil. She was 14 and a bride of just three months when her husband, father and brother were rounded up in a campaign of ethnic cleansing under Saddam. None have ever been found.
Yeah Mr. Kerry, why should this day be over hyped…what a failure. I think my favorite quote from Kerry today is this one
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that Iraq is less a terrorist threat to the United States now than it was two years ago?
SEN. KERRY: No, it’s more. And, in fact, I believe the world is less safe today than it was two and a half years ago.
Man, this guy is a straight ding.
Here is another interview The Captain has up featuring former Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin and another one of my homestate moonbats Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). What a doozy.
WOOLSEY: … We also would like to see, ah, the United States military take a step back and the multinational, ah, humanitarian groups step forward so we can help the Iraqis now with their, ah, rebuilding their infrastructure, rebuilding their economy, and helping take the military presence, ah, to help them instead to train their, ah, their security.
HOST: Congresswoman, are you calling for an immediate phased withdrawal along the lines of what Senator Kennedy suggested last week?
WOOLSEY: Well, I’m calling for immediate planning for withdrawal, ah, by pulling, ah, the Iraqis, ah, their neighbors, ah, the Arab nations together with the United Nations and the United States and talk about how we’re going to do this, and, ah, ah, how — how best to do it immediately.
HOST: If I could just follow up, Jed, on that line about political pressure, there really hasn’t been — apart from some members of Congress, Senator Kennedy to be sure — there really hasn’t been a lot of political or popular pressure to start a withdrawal. So that really gives the president some breathing room with his policy, don’t you think?
BABBIN: Oh, it sure does. The President has it right, and with all due respect, Congresswoman, you have it so vastly, vastly wrong, it’s hard to even begin to describe. People have been asking, the President has been asking the international community to come in and help in Iraq for almost two years now. The fact is that no matter how much wishful thinking we have, they’re not going to come! We can go to the UN until the cows come home, and these people are not going to send in humanitarian relief, they’re not going to send in engineers, they’re not going to pay for things. These people have abandoned democracy, and to say that we’re going to have some sort of miraculous recovery at the United Nations or that the eunuchs of Old Europe will come riding to our rescue is simply disingenuous.
WOOLSEY: Well, I disagree with you. Actually, I believe that if we, ah, remove our military presence, and are there as members of a multinational, um, peacekeeping organization, then the other countries will come forward. Actually, I heard an interview with a leader in France saying that’s exactly what they would be pleased to do.
BABBIN: If I could jump back in there for a minute, you’re saying that Iraq’s neighbors are going to come in and help? Syria and Iran, which are backing the insurgency? I mean, you can’t seriously suggest that the neighboring nations are going to come to the aid of Iraq when they’re doing everything they can in desperation to try to prevent democracy!
WOOLSEY: Part of that, I believe, has a lot to do with our military presence, the United States looking like occupiers. Now that this election is behind us, we should help the Iraqi people put their government together for the Iraqi people. But that means we don’t put together the infrastructure through US corporations so that Halliburton makes all the profit and the benefit instead of the Iraqi people.
These people just make it too easy to riducule them. I mean really, are some people this stupid. Thank god Babbin was there to dismantle her.
Little Green Footballs has this about some Spanish protesting the fact that Iraqi’s are voting. I like it when cowards protest.
People shout slogans during a protest in central Madrid January 30, 2005. Marchers were protesting Iraq holding national elections under what they called U.S occupation.
Michelle Malkin has a post out about how silent the looney left is in the blogosphere today….I guess their secret hope that their nation would fail got the better of them. They can all go to hell.
I guess they were upset that their kind of election didn’t happen, you know the kind where dead people vote….
Check out Beef Always Wins for his pictures of today while flying over Iraq in his helicopter.
I’m sure tomorrow the lib’s will have more wacky quotes we can all write about.
Last but not least, please go check out the Iraqi brothers at Iraq The Model for a first hand account.
I couldn’t think of a scene more beautiful than that. From the early hours of the morning, People filled the street to the voting center in my neighborhood; youths, elders, women and men. Women’s turn out was higher by the way. And by 11 am the boxes where I live were almost full!
Anyone watching that scene cannot but have tears of happiness, hope, pride and triumph.The sounds of explosions and gunfire were clearly heard, some were far away but some were close enough to make the windows of the center shake but no one seemed to care about them as if the people weren’t hearing these sounds at all.
I saw an old woman that I thought would get startled by the loud sound of a close explosion but she didn’t seem to care, instead she was busy verifying her voting station’s location as she found out that her name wasn’t listed in this center.
How can I describe it!? Take my eyes and look through them my friends, you have supported the day of Iraq’s freedom and today, Iraqis have proven that they’re not going to disappoint their country or their friends.
Is there a bigger victory than this? I believe not.
Picture from todays post at Iraq The Model
See author page