Congratulations to the Iraqi nation. In the face of extreme intimidation Iraqis turned out in numbers that would have been considered to be satisfactory even in well-established democracies like the US. There was never any real doubt that voters would turn out, but there is nothing like confirmation. And there was always a question of how many of them would turn out.
While it wasn’t 72% as The Australian claims, (Iraqi officials according to AAP and AFP aren’t able to say what percentage has voted) it appears to have been satisfactory. AAP (published in The Age) makes special mention of 400 who voted in Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein. You’d have to think these were the bravest of the brave.
AFP, published in The Daily Star, a Lebanese English language daily, quotes 32 year old Samir Hassan, who lost his leg in a car bomb attack last October as saying “I would have crawled here if I had to. I don’t want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace.”
This naked defiance by millions of Iraqi civilians may have done more than the US military to make Iraq a peaceful and democratic country. But then, without the military, it wouldn’t have happened at all.