IRAQ: Voices from Iraq's provincial elections

It could be weeks before the outcome of Iraq's first provincial elections since 2005 are known, but as voting was held today, those taking part -- either as voters or election workers -- were eager to have their voices heard. Here are some of them:

Ali Alwan, a government employee at a polling station in Fallouja: "I walked four kilometers (2.5 miles) to get here. It's a bit far, but I feel good. I will vote for the honest people who will serve this oppressed city."

Ahmed Farhan, auto parts dealer in Fallouja: "I came to vote for Ali Zigam, who is from Tawafiq (Sunni Arab political bloc). This person is an honest one ... a real Iraqi. He didn't come with those who came in with American tanks to rule Iraq. I walked a long time to give my vote. It's worth the effort."

IRAQ: At long last, provincial elections

Voting has begun in the long-anticipated, much-delayed provincial elections in Iraq, where many of the 14 provincial councils being contested are likely to undergo major changes that should more accurately reflect regional ethnic and sectarian populations. Polls opened at 7 a.m. Iraq time Saturday for more than 15 million people who registered to vote. At stake are 440 seats.

Security, as always, was a major concern despite the country's relative calm in recent months. The thousands of schools being used as polling places were ringed with coils of razor wire days ago, and police began 24-hour guard at them earlier in the week. "We have many important people who may come here to vote, so it has to be well protected," said police Lt. Dhia Khadim on Friday afternoon as he showed visitors around a polling station in Karada, a Baghdad neighborhood that is home to several high-ranking Iraqi officials.

IRAQ: Congressman wonders why all Medal of Honor awards were posthumous

One of the mysteries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan involves the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest commendation for bravery.

Why have there been so few awards (four for Iraq and one for Afghanistan)? And why have all five been posthumous? In World War II, the posthumous figure for Medals of Honor was 57% and in Vietnam 38%.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine officer, sent a letter this week to President Obama asking for a "thorough examination" of the Medal of Honor selection process.

"I am concerned that either knowingly or inadvertently, the Medal of Honor awards process is becoming biased to only acts of valor that result in the death of the service member," Hunter wrote.

". . . The selflessness and combat heroism that is represented by the Medal of Honor must be preserved for future generations."

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Marine Capt. Duncan Hunter in Iraq. Credit: Hunter family

IRAQ: Mock election posters are popping up around Baghdad

 

Iraq’s local elections on Saturday aren’t all serious.

With a blinding array of party names, photos, campaign numbers and slogans such as Change and Integrity, some Iraqis have taken to making their own mock campaign posters for fun.

A photographer named Saheb in Baghdad decided to surprise a friend by creating a campaign poster from a picture he had snapped of his friend.

“I designed an election poster. I put the name of my friend. I gave his party a list number,” Saheb said.

ISRAEL: Elections, and the prophecy of pot

David Ben-Gurion was Israel's first prime minister. Each year, the date of his death is marked by a ceremony, and many politicians take the opportunity to deliver important policy speeches at the grave of the country's founding father.

These days, a different brand of public figure pays Ben-Gurion a visit, bringing with him an even more different policy. Gil Kopatch, the head of the Aleh Yarok (Green Leaf, in Hebrew) party seeking a seat in Israel's parliament in the coming elections, filmed a campaign ad at the graveside. Some were angered by the ad, and the Nature and National Parks Protection Authority protested before the Central Elections Committee for what it considered disrespect of the site, which is part of a national park. Justice Eliezer Rivlin, who chairs the committee, rejected the request to ban the ad, saying it was his job to permit freedom of expression for all, including the crass and distasteful.

This might not have been a big deal, if it weren't for the party's main platform issue: legalizing cannabis.

So, sitting on the grave, Kopatch talks to the dead leader:

"You know, there are around a million Israelis who smoke this stuff. You know how much this costs me?! Loads. And do you know who grows and produces this? Hamas and Hezbollah. Yes, David. As defense minister, it is important that you know this. They're making piles of money off of us. They take the money and buy kassams to fire at us. A pity, no? Why shouldn't it be legal?  You see, if it'll be legal, we could grow it here on these arid Negev hills, make the wilderness flower. We will keep the money in Israel and use it for good causes, David, like raising the teachers' salaries. ... The question is, though, what will Hamas and Hezbollah do with all the hashish they'll be left with? The answer is simple: They'll smoke it. They'll smoke it, David, and be calm. Because a good Arab is a calm Arab. And this," concludes Kopatch with a puff, "is my security concept."

So ...

And it shall come to pass in the end of days that they shall turn their stones into stoners, their hotheads into potheads. Not quite what the prophet Isaiah had in mind.

-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem

LEBANON: Hezbollah says war with Israel is always a possibility

The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said today that he was confident that his Shiite militia's military capacity would make Israel think twice about trying again to weaken the organization by launching another military confrontation.

During a rare press conference, during which he appeared to reporters on a giant screen for security reasons, Nasrallah maintained that the possibility of a war is always present.

Hezbollah’s chief was speaking on the occasion of the “freedom day," a date marking a major swap of prisoners with Israel in 2004.

Beyond the rhetoric that a new military confrontation would be “highly costly” and “highly difficult” for Israel after their first "failed" war in July 2006, Hezbollah’s leader was generally careful to make no signal of any plan to provoke a fight with the Israelis.

IRAQ: Blackwater security may be forced out of Iraq

Blackwater Worldwide, the security firm that allegedly used excessive force to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, will soon be forced to leave the country, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

Iraq's Ministry of Interior has announced that it will not renew Blackwater's security license. The move follows a November agreement between Iraq and the U.S. that allows the Iraqi government to decide which security firms can operate here. Blackwater employs roughly 1,000 personnel in Iraq.

"We have been informed that Blackwater’s private security company operating license will not be granted," said a U.S. embassy official Thursday.  "We don’t have specifics about dates.  We are working with the government of Iraq and our contractors to address the implications of this decision."

JORDAN: Al Qaeda-linked group accused in attack on choir

An Al Qaeda-linked group was allegedly responsible for a violent attack on a Christian choir group in the Jordanian capital of Amman last July, authorities revealed Tuesday.

The incident took place in a downtown Amman neighborhood. A gunman opened fire on a bus full of tourists, wounding six, including four Lebanese musicians from a university choir.

After months of investigation, a group of 12 Jordanians of Palestinian origin were put on trial Tuesday on charges that included July's shooting.

Their indictment alleged that the group's mastermind, Shaker Khatib, was trained by a Lebanese offshoot of Osama bin Laden's organization.

ISRAEL: Interfaith prayer outside hospital aims to heal

Rabbis, priests and sheiks came together in Israel on Monday for a prayer for peace. Organized by Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), together with Jerusalem Peacemakers' Eliyahu McLean, the group of interfaith clerics congregated outside the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer where Israeli soldiers and civilians and Gazans receive medical treatment. Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman, director of RHR, spoke of the deep pain that brought them there; the rabbis recited El Male Rahamim, a Jewish prayer for the dead, and the priests and Sufi sheiks offered their own prayers. The ceremony ended in a song for peace in Arabic and Hebrew.

IRAQ: Iraq's Communists hope for backlash against religious rule

Millions of Iraqis are expected to go to polls Saturday in provincial elections seen as a harbinger of things to come in national elections planned later in the year, and one group hoping that voters move away from the religious parties now dominating power are the Communists. The Iraqi Communist Party is running 27 candidates for Baghdad's 57-seat provincial council, where it currently holds two seats.

Since its formation in 1934, the party has been battered by a succession of authoritarian regimes. Read more about its campaign efforts, particularly those of candidate Abdul Munim Jabbar Hadi shown above campaigning in Baghdad.

In the meantime, special voting was held across the country Wednesday for security forces, hospital patients and prison inmates. In the northern city of Mosul alone, election officials said there were about 77,000 such voters. In another hotly contested area, the southern city of Basra, there were early complaints from voters in hospitals that they were not able to cast ballots because they had not been given advance notice of the paperwork they would need to offer proof of identity.

Local journalists also reported that Iraqi security forces hit some reporters who showed up at special voting sites to cover balloting.

-- Tina Susman in Baghdad

Photo credit: Raheem Salman