10-25-05, 7:46 am
A secret British government sponsored poll shows intensifying opposition to the occupation of Iraq by foreign troops and growing support for attacks aimed at British and US military.
The British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph published the results of the survey Sunday showing that less than 1 percent of Iraqis believe that the occupation has made them safe. More than eight of 10 Iraqis oppose the occupation. As many as 45 percent of those surveyed believe attacks on foreign troops is justified.
The survey information was released to the press as Iraq, Britain, and the US wait for the results of the referendum on a draft of the new Iraqi Constitution held more than a week.
The Iraqi Election Commission reported concerns about questionable vote tallies in certain provinces and conducted an audit of the vote before releasing final totals.
Early results, however, indicate that Salahuddin Province, a Sunni majority region vote by over 81 percent to reject the Constitution. As many as 96 percent of voters in Anbar Province, also Sunni majority, rejected the Constitution. A third Sunni majority province, Dyala, rejected the Constitution by a majority of 55 percent.
Eleven other provinces dominated by Kurdish or Shi'ite majorities appear to have supported the Constitution with large majorities, says the electoral commission.
Early results for these 14 provinces reflect about three-quarters of the total votes cast in the entire country. Final results for Arbil, Babel, Basra and Nineveh, the latter of which is a Sunni majority province, have not been released yet.
Early projections about Nineveh’s result suggested erroneously that that province had overwhelmingly adopted the Constitution. This outcome was disputed by US military officials, however, who believe the vote outcomes more closely resembles the Dyala Province totals.
According to the rules governing the adoption process, if three provinces vote against the Constitution by a two-thirds majority, it fails, and a new Constitution must be drawn up, adopted, and held up for referendum. If Nineveh does in fact only vote against the Constitution by a 55 percent majority, then it will have passed.
But, if this assumed result holds out, it will signal that Sunnis either continued to boycott the vote in large numbers or that they voted against the Constitution nearly unanimously.
The failure of a broad consensus on the Constitution, despite its adoption would allow Iraq to form a government and should raise the call for ending the US occupation, would widely be regarded as a major defeat for the Bush administration.
Within hours of the closure of the polls in Iraq, Bush administration officials declared victory and pushed the idea that adoption of the Constitution would be a sign that their policy on Iraq had succeeded.
But analysts are saying that even adoption of the Constitution, because it will not have much Sunni support, represents a failure for the process and for the Bush administration. Frank Kaplan of Slate.com writes that if the outcome holds as suggested by early results, then the Constitution cannot have much legitimacy and puts the process back to where it was prior to the referendum.
Rice's remarks are aimed at raising the possibility of a strengthened security situation that would allow the possibility of US troop withdrawal. She wanted to raise hopes about the 'W' word without actually having to say it, thereby releasing some of the intense pressure on the administration, from all sides, to show progress in this illegitimate war.
Unfortunately for the administration, if the vote totals hold out, even if the Constitution is adopted, their predictions and PR spin will be little more than wishful thinking.
This is evidenced by yesterday’s attack on the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels compound in Baghdad, a site at which dozens of non-Iraqi journalists are known to be housed during their stay in Iraq. The hotel is heavily guarded by a permanent station of US military troops and light armor.
As many as 20 journalists and passersby were killed and over 40 wounded in the failed attempt to invade the hotel and capture journalists. Continuing violence in the past three days has killed 70 Iraqis.
An alternative course for the administration, if indeed weakening the base of support for the insurgency is its goal, is to begin troop withdrawal as soon as physically possible, redirect promised material and financial aid toward civilian infrastructure rebuilding projects (rather than military-oriented projects), and turn oversight of the political process over to the Iraqi people with assistance from the international community.
Concerns about Syrian, Iran or other involvement in Iraq, if they are legitimate, should be approached from a multilateral and diplomatic standpoint, not from the perspective of the Bush administration's foreign policy and public relations objectives.
Obstinately insisting that the administration can unilaterally direct the future of events in the Middle East lacks credibility and is a waste of time to continue debating.
