Early Voting in Iraq Is Mostly Smooth

A man dipped his finger in ink after voting in provincial elections on Wednesday at the Medical City hospital in Baghdad.

January 29, 2009

Early Voting in Iraq Is Mostly Smooth

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and STEVEN LEE MYERS

BAGHDAD — Thousands of soldiers, police officers, hospital patients and prisoners cast ballots on Wednesday as part of early voting in Iraq’s provincial elections.

At least one act of violence accompanied the voting. Two police officers guarding a polling center south of Kirkuk were killed by gunmen who fired at them from a passing car, according to an official from the Ministry of Interior who spoke on condition of anonymity. The gunmen escaped, the official said.

Overall, however, the voting appeared to go smoothly, Iraqi election officials said.

About 615,000 people, most of them employed by Iraq’s security forces, were eligible to vote Wednesday, three days before Saturday’s election. Government officials said the early balloting would help ensure that security forces would be on duty to protect polling stations on Saturday, when about 14 million more Iraqis are eligible to vote.

“The arrangements we are seeing today are a slap in the face to those who are betting that Iraqis will not go to the ballot box because they are despairing,” Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said in a speech on Wednesday.

More than 14,000 candidates are running for 440 seats on provincial councils in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The election will be delayed in Kirkuk Province, a troubled region where much of Iraq’s oil reserves lie, and in the three provinces of Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region.

The local councils function much like state legislatures, but are also responsible for selecting governors and provincial police chiefs.

Perhaps most important, the councils are a prime source of patronage. They dole out government jobs, social benefits and contracts, each an invaluable asset in a country that has high unemployment rates and significant poverty — but that is expected to embark on a major government-sponsored rebuilding program over the next few years.

In Iraq, unaccustomed to democratic exercises, the line between the official and the political is often blurred.

Some members of the Iraqi police found themselves in a quandary because the man to whom they owe their allegiance — Jawad al-Bolani, the minister of the interior — is running candidates against those aligned with the prime minister.

“It is so confusing,” said Haider Raheem, a 32-year-old policeman in Hilla, a city south of Baghdad.

In the Karrada district of Baghdad, soldiers and police streamed steadily into the Furat (or Euphrates) Middle School, a worn, dusty building where posters encouraged voting: “Register. Vote. Make the Change.”

By late afternoon, more than half of the 4,000 people eligible to vote early at the school had done so, said Adel Jabbar, a 38-year-old poll monitor. Above the doorways to each room that had been set aside for voting, signs were hung forbidding cell phones, cameras, smoking and weapons.

Mr. Jabbar reported no problems.

But in Samarra, Zaher Jasmin, a local manager for Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission, said fewer than half of the 4,000 police officers he had expected to cast ballots Wednesday had done so an hour before polls closed. After talking with their higher-ups, he said that the officers’ work had been deemed more important than voting.

“They have duties in very far away and dangerous places,” he said, “and they have not received permission to leave their posts to vote.”

Reporting was contributing by Suadad al-Salhy, Atheer Kakan and Mohammed Hussein from Baghdad, and an employee of The New York Times from Hilla. 

Posted: January 20, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009 

by Janet Porter 

World Net Daily  

As President Bush leaves office today, I stand in respect and gratitude for a man who did an enormous amount of good in the last eight years.

I was a part of the recount team in Broward and Palm Beach Counties in 2000. I saw the hanging, pregnant and dimpled chads up close – along with the miracle of God’s grace in giving us President George W. Bush for the last eight years.

Before you itemize a list off all the ways you think he’s let us down, I want to confess that I – that we, the church, have let him down. I told the president that I would pray for him every day and I meant it. But life got in the way and I would go days, sometimes weeks, without remembering to lift him up in prayer. Mr. President, I am sorry.

For eight years, it seems that all he’s heard about is what he’s done wrong. But Mr. President, let me be among the first to say thank you for all the things you’ve done right.

Beginning with yesterday, thank you for commuting the sentences of border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. They will finally go free for the “crime” of doing their job and keeping our borders safe from drug smuggling illegal aliens.

Thank you most of all for your incredible and unparalleled legacy for life!

Thank you for reinstating the Mexico City Policy (2001) that requires all non-governmental organizations that receive federal funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortions in other countries.

Thank you for signing into law:

• the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (2002), which extends legal protection to infants who survive abortions by providing them with the same legal protections as babies who are born prematurely;
• the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act (2003) which protects children from being delivered four-fifths of the way, and killed by having their brains sucked out;
• the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (2004), which defines a child “in utero” at any stage of development as human, with legal rights against death or injury from an outside attacker (except the abortionist);
• the Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment (2004), which prohibits discrimination against health care providers who decline to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

Thank you for sending a letter to the Democratic leaders in Congress (2007) threatening to veto any bill that weakened existing pro-life policy.

Thank you for defining the term “child” from conception to birth in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) through your former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson in 2002.

Thank you for protecting the freedom of conscience for health care workers (2008), through your Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt who issued a regulation to protect the rights of federally funded health care providers to decline to participate in services to which they morally object, including abortion.

Thank you for twice signing the executive orders that kept human embryos from being used for spare parts and prohibiting federal funds to be used for destructive embryonic stem cell research.

Thank you for appointing two Supreme Court justices who are committed to upholding the United States Constitution: John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Thank you for your threat of a veto that kept the most dangerous threat to our freedom of speech, religion and association from becoming law: the so-called “hate crimes” bill. It seems to me that those who are so concerned about controlling speech that could be interpreted as being “offensive” should take a look at their own. The mocking, ridicule and hatred against this man is unparalleled. I’d list examples, but they would exceed my column word limit.

Thank you, Mr. President, for standing up against a flood of criticism to do what is right.

Thank you for keeping our country safe from attack since Sept. 11, 2001. The president rightly said in his farewell address: “There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil.” The results speak for themselves. We’ve been safe on our soil while President Bush was at the helm. Thank you, sir.

We went on with our lives as usual after 9/11, but as he stated in his address, President Bush “never did.” And for that I am grateful. Thank you for understanding the battle against a hostile Islamic takeover is the struggle between “two dramatically different systems.” It is not about two equal ideologies we should work to appease. Rather, as he stated in his farewell address, the colliding worldviews are not moral equivalents: “Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.”

I am grateful we had a president for eight years with moral clarity. As he said in his last address: “I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise.”

You remember eight years ago when people were unable to recognize that highjacking planes and flying them into buildings was something we could uniformly recognize as “evil.” We even had people like Bill Maher confuse that terrorism with an act of “bravery.” What a confused society we have become. And I am grateful for President Bush’s willingness to call evil evil. Woe to those who call evil good.

In that same address, the president also said: “Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.” Of course, “every time” and “everywhere” includes in the womb. It is wrong, and this president stood against it.

So I would encourage my fellow Americans to stop complaining about President Bush long enough to look at the incredible good he’s done. Thank him. Thank God for him. And if you don’t agree with my words, then just brace yourself for what’s to come without him.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA, Iraq – The Salvadorian flag lowered

Ex-sailor gets Silver Star for Iraq actions

The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Jan 24, 2009 7:12:27 EST  

FARMINGTON, N.M. — A former Navy medic was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest military decoration, for treating four badly wounded Marines amid machine-gun fire and grenade explosions in Iraq.

Jesse Hickey of Farmington received the medal during a ceremony Jan. 7 at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Hickey, 26, was walking behind a tank with a squad of Marines on Nov. 16, 2005, in New Ubaydi, Iraq, to check homes for insurgents during Operation Steel Curtain.

Insurgents began shooting from a grove of palm trees and some homes, Hickey said. The squad ran for shelter at another home and found several wounded Marines lying outside.

Hickey began treating an injured Marine when an insurgent tossed a grenade next to the men. Hickey said the Marine picked up the grenade and it blew off his hand as he threw it.

That Marine also received a Silver Star because Hickey said the grenade would have killed them.

“I remember being scared as hell,” Hickey said.

Another grenade exploded and sent shrapnel into Hickey’s legs and arms. He continued to treat wounded Marines and checked pulses on those who had died. He tied a tourniquet on one Marine who lost his leg.

Dennis Rogers, a Marine corporal who lives in Lincoln, Neb., recalled Hickey rushing to help after the men heard someone call for a medic.

“He was the first one,” Rogers said, adding that Hickey didn’t flinch when the grenade exploded.

Although he was wounded, Hickey exposed himself to automatic gunfire while rushing 75 meters through an enemy kill zone to assist and evacuate wounded Marines, his Silver Star citation says.

Once inside a building where the wounded Marines were moved, Hickey directed others in treating the injuries but refused help for his arm.

Hickey said his wounds were not as bad as the others so he refused to leave on a helicopter until the wounded Marines were removed. The citation says Hickey’s efforts were instrumental in saving numerous lives.

Rogers said Hickey deserved the Silver Star.

“He definitely went above and beyond,” Rogers said.

Hickey said those who lost limbs in the explosion would have died from blood loss had he not tied tourniquets on them.

Hickey, who has fully recovered and lives in Farmington, was transported to a hospital in Germany and treated the next day. He was glad to see the Marines at the Silver Star ceremony.

“These guys are like my brothers,” Hickey said.

• Information from: The Daily Times, http://www.daily-times.com

University brings classes to soldiers in Iraq

The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jan 25, 2009 14:07:49 EST

BALTIMORE — The University of Maryland, University College, is the first U.S. school to offer face-to-face classes during the war in Iraq. But far more meaningful than a few college credits is the sense of normalcy the classes offer.

Staff Sgt. Bryan Julian of Indianapolis never attended college until he served in Iraq. A few months ago, he started classes, taking on textbooks and homework besides the rifles and chaos of war.

“It’s actually quite nice,” said Julian, 34. “I’m in the National Guard, I’m a police officer back home, so my definition of normal is probably different from someone else’s.”

Julian has served as a medic in Iraq for five months. He has seven months remaining on his tour, and decided to use his spare time taking sociology and criminal justice classes. He hopes the classes will help him become a detective.

“I try to stay busy over here,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “The busier you stay, the faster time goes by.”

But getting — and providing — an education in a war zone is not easy. Students come to class not just with books and pencils, but guns. They do homework in between military assignments. Classes at Joint Base Balad, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, are conducted in a building that formerly housed Saddam Hussein’s air force academy.

Six UMUC professors teach in Iraq. Mark Fisch, who teaches sociology, criminal justice and other courses, recalled teaching a class as mortars and rockets exploded outside.

“Obviously, you have to stop lecturing and deal with that,” said Fisch, 58, who spent much of his career at small liberal arts colleges in the United States. “There are incoming mortars, but it’s rare.”

Before professors go to Iraq, they receive military training, learning about the Iraqi culture, safety protocols and anti-terrorism. The professors are assigned bulletproof helmets and vests.

The attendance policy grants leeway to students who miss class because of a mission.

UMUC has offered courses on military bases during wartime for about 60 years, and has not had any faculty fatalities.

About 300 military personnel, most of them younger than 30, take 18 undergraduate courses, which usually run four to six weeks. The military covers the cost of everything except textbooks, which come from Germany and are rented to students for about $20.

The courses offer a morale boost, and they can also help improve soldiers’ military work. One captain plans to require the 20 soldiers under his command to take an introductory writing class so they can compose better military memos, according to Daniel Powers, a UMUC representative who oversees the classes at Joint Base Balad.

Fisch said that teaching soldiers in Iraq has been perhaps the most fulfilling experience of his career. He intends to continue teaching there for another six months before taking a break and returning stateside.

He said, “We are educators, we are entertainers, and we are a few hours when they don’t have to be on missions. We are a few hours when they can actually be normal college students.”