Juan Cole: Falling like Flies, 53 Iraqi Parties Withdraw from Elections

[diamond14]

looks like the new bush* SALVADOR approach is working well....bush* mercenaries are all over the place....

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http://www.juancole.com/


Thursday, January 13, 2005
Falling like Flies
53 Iraqi Parties Withdraw from Elections

-snips-

Xinhuanet reports that: ' According to the Al Furat newspaper, 53 political parties and organizations as well as 30 individuals have asked their names to be dropped from the election lists in a bid to show their rejection of elections under US occupation. '

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that, as well, Shaikh Hasan's own party, the National Front for Iraqi Unity, has withdrawn from the election to protest his recent arrest.

Al-Zaman reports that the large and powerful Dulaim tribe of Western Iraq has issued a statement condemning the killing by US troops of one of its chiefs, Shaikh Abd al-Razzaq Inad Mu'jal al-Ka'ud, last week, as well as the extensive destruction of life and property that has accompanied the US occupation in their areas...... They complained that lack of security in Sunni Arab areas made voting out of the question, and said that anyway many parties were counterfeiting ballots.


Minister of State Adnan Janabi, a key aide of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has resigned to protest being detained and handcuffed by US troops at a checkpoint outside the Green Zone, where government offices and the US embassy are barricaded.


Wire services report 11 dead in Iraq violence, including two car bombings and a gun battle in Mosul, the assassination of the deputy police chief of Baquba, the burning of four bank guards and the shooting of a policeman in Baghdad.

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AND, since Juan Cole's blog was posted, there's this Iraq news...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/13/iraq/index.html

"Meanwhile, gunmen killed the director of a Baghdad election center Thursday, another in a series of attacks targeting election officials and candidates as the vote set for January 30 approaches.

Baghdad police, who reported the slaying, did not release the director's name. He was in charge of an election center in the al-Khadoumiyah neighborhood in the northern part of Baghdad."


:nuke: