It seems that the traditional abject capitulation of "respectable" journalists to war fever is still very much alive. It sounded as though even reasonably intelligent and independent sectors of the news media were so desperate for "good news" from Iraq that they eagerly jumped into a frenzy of just making stuff up out of whole cloth. They were apparently tired of reporting nothing but car bombings and Coalition atrocities and overjoyed to have an opportunity of filing something that would mollify the Bush people and their supporters.
Another odd thing is that there seems to have been very little notice in the MSM of the point that, even though relatively few Sunnis apparently voted, and few were expected to vote, the powers that be assured the press that they would probably put more Sunnis into the assembly than the actual voting would justify in order to balance things out a bit. It seems to me that this renders the "election" a largely symbolic event. Imagine what would have been said in this country if the powers that be here promised Kerry to throw a few extra electoral votes his way to compensate for the fact that "not enough" Kerry voters actually voted.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ The very existence of the state demands that there be some privileged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism. -- Mikhail Bakunin, Letters on Patriotism, 1869