Election engineering

Is covert manipulation America's gift to democracy?


But Bush's man in Iraq, Allawi, could not win despite US efforts

In the previous post about Haiti, I proposed a hypothesis that America packages elections so that its undemocratic policies can be ratified in a vote that makes possible only the narrowest choice. That process is in full swing in Haiti now, as the UN attacks the poor majority Lavalas party of democratically-elected and US-ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In the case of Iraq, America's purpose all along has been taking of the country followed by installation of stooges who could administer it for the benefit of long-term US military basing, US foreign policy goals, and US strategic energy interests. It only requires perusal of the former Coalition Provisional Authority's Orders, and realization that the US seeks to preserve their effect in the writing and implementation of the country's new constitution to see what the US plan is all about.

Though the outcome was nowhere near ideal from the US administration's point of view, Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker for July 25, illuminates the little-understood back-room machinations that preceded Iraq's January 30, 2005 parliamentary election. We all recall the purple fingers that saturated our televisions and newspapers the week of February 1, especially during the State of the Union message delivered by President Bush on February 2.

In that speech, the President told us,

We will succeed in Iraq because Iraqis are determined to fight for their own freedom, and to write their own history. As Prime Minister Allawi said in his speech to Congress last September, "Ordinary Iraqis are anxious to shoulder all the security burdens of our country as quickly as possible." That is the natural desire of an independent nation, and it is also the stated mission of our coalition in Iraq.

Hersh puts Bush's support for Allawi in a whole different light:

The [Administration's] goal, according to several former intelligence and military officials, was not to achieve outright victory for Allawi -- such an outcome would not be possible or credible, given the strength of the pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties—but to minimize the religious Shiites’ political influence. The Administration hoped to keep Allawi as a major figure in a coalition government, and to do so his party needed a respectable share of the vote.

The main advocate for channeling aid to preferred parties was Thomas Warrick, a senior adviser on Iraq for the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, who was backed, in this debate, by his superiors and by the National Security Council. Warrick’s plan involved using forty million dollars that had been appropriated for the election to covertly provide cell phones, vehicles, radios, security, administrative help, and cash to the parties the Administration favored. [emphasis added]

Hersh goes on to explain the even after some of the organinzations involved along with members of Congress balked at providing direct support for Allawi in order to influence the election, the Administration continued with, according to Hersh, ``activities [that] were kept, in part, ``off the books'' -- they were conducted by retired C.I.A. officers and other non-government personnel, and used funds that were not necessarily appropriated by Congress.''

Hersh's piece tends to confirm the suspicions of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who wrote in a March 23 piece,

What occurred in Iraq on Jan. 30, 2005 was an American-brokered event, not an expression of Iraqi national unity. The U.S. lowering of the Shi'a vote is case in point....

The Iraqi elections have been embraced almost universally as a great victory for the forces of democracy, not only in Iraq, but throughout the entire Middle East. The fact, however, is that the Iraqi elections weren't about the free election of a government reflecting the will of the Iraqi people, but the carefully engineered selection of a government that would behave in a manner dictated by the United States. In Iraq, democracy was hijacked by the Americans.

Ritter discusses the irregularity of the vote counting, where final tallies were delayed for two weeks. As Deep Blade Journal reported on Sunday February 13, the initial tallies were: Unified Shiite list...48%; Kurdish list...26%; Allawi's Iraqi list...14%. Ritter explains the depressed vote for the Unified list.

Well-placed sources in Iraq who were in a position to know have told me that the actual Shi'a vote was 56 percent. American intervention, in the form of a 'secret vote count' conducted behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny, produced the Feb. 14 result.

The lowering of the Shi'a vote re-engineered the post-election political landscape in Iraq dramatically. The goal of the U.S., in doing this, is either to guarantee the adoption of the U.S.-drafted interim constitution, or make sure that there are not enough votes to adopt any Shi'a re-write. If the U.S.-drafted Iraqi constitution prevails, the Bush administration would be comfortable with the secular nature of any Iraqi government it produces. If it fails, then the Bush administration would much rather continue to occupy Iraq under the current U.S.-written laws, than allow for the creation of a pro-Iranian theocracy. In any event, the Shi'a stand to lose.

Deep Blade Journal carried several posts last winter that speculated about how the campaign was being run and how US goals were being served. Two examples...

Tuesday, January 18, 2005: ``I will make a prediction. Somehow, Allawi will keep power after the January 30 election date. I'm not basing this on any specific knowledge, just a hunch. As Chomsky would say, democracy is fine as long as the correct choices are made and as long as the resulting government takes orders from its master. And recent reports of secret telephone conferences between the White House, Allawi, and Jordan's King Abdullah portend that something is up.... [The US-funded campaign is] selling Allawi on TV as the tough hand against the violence. For Allawi, more violence is better. No one else can run a campaign, the candidates are too scared to be in public. Allawi dominates on television. It's only the Shiite UIA left standing in the way of Bush/Allawi domination. Is it so hard to believe -- with Bush in charge and all potential voters living in a climate of deep-seated fear -- that some sort of chicanery, perhaps including suppressing votes (violence is perfect for that), stuffing the ballot boxes, and gathering votes from the diaspora would come into play?''

Sunday, February 13, 2005: ``Iraq election results reinforce Bush win.... Failure to achieve absolute majority will dilute Shiite power... Yes, Allawi is beaten, but it's not as huge a defeat for Bush, .... In fact, Allawi, from the third-place position, will hold significant influence in the formation of a new government because the Shiites are 20% short of the 2/3 coalition that is required....''

So, how has it all turned out? First off, I want to make crystal clear that I believe the Iraqis who voted on January 30 voted with great courage and voted with their hearts. Those hearts have made takeover of the country that much more difficult for the US military machine. Iraqi voters overwhelmingly were acting with a desire to see the end of the US occupation.

Iraqi government seems marginal
What has followed since January is a weak government, formed after months of internal struggle. It is not the government the US desired, so it is kept marginal. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other Shiite officials have been rebuffed by the US in their desire to remove Baathist operatives from the Interior and Defense Ministries, and also disband brutal militias composed of former Saddam loyalists that were developed during the puppet regime of Allawi. And both President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have not been too shy about issuing orders to the Iraqis and making clear that there will be no timetable for a pullout of US troops. Perhaps al-Jaafari's recent visit to Iran is an attempt to strike some kind of independent posture, I don't know....

Meanwhile, violence has reached an astonishing level, as can be followed in bitter detail every day through reading Juan Cole's Informed Comment. That link goes to a piece indicating worry amongst the most important clerics in Iraq about what appears to be an out-of-control civil war.

Everybody is a loser after the administration's election engineering effort. The US taxpayer is forced to foot the bill for what could be an endless quagmire. US troops have been betrayed by President Bush and eventually will be almost entirely alone as the effort to Iraqi-ize the occupation fails. But the biggest losers will be the Iraqi people, who are caught in the middle of the superpower's desire to hold its spoils of war and the terrible violence in which the resistance to the occupation has decided to engage. The January 30 vote, I suspect, was not a call for this unfortunate outcome. Change of these conditions would require that the US president change course -- something he has steadfastly refused to do.