Iraq elections loom as debacle for US occupation

Under the stipulations of the interim constitution imposed on Iraq by the US in March 2004, the purpose of the coming ballot is the election of a Transitional National Assembly, which will be responsible for drafting a new permanent Iraqi constitution. The constitution is to be voted on by referendum no later than October, followed by another election for the National Assembly no later than December 2005.

Washington’s ambition is to produce a puppet government with enough domestic and international legitimacy to be able to sign off on the real aims of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. These include the establishment of long-term military bases in the Iraq, from which the US can exert strategic hegemony over the Middle East, and the sale to American corporate interests of Iraq’s state-owned oil industry—which controls the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

Far from winning over the Iraqi people, however, each stage of the US occupation has served to only heighten the resistance to the colonial agenda. Claims that the invasion of Iraq is bringing democracy and liberation to the Iraqi people are largely for propaganda purposes in the US itself. They have little resonance in Iraq, where the US actions have produced a nightmare of death and destruction.

As many as 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion. Iraqis have witnessed cities like Karbala, Najaf and Fallujah being pounded into rubble. Two years after the fall of Baghdad, the average household in the capital still only gets three hours electricity per day, while fuel shortages are continuous. Unemployment remains over 50 percent and infant mortality has reached the level of poverty-stricken countries like Haiti. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been detained at various times and, in many cases, subjected to abuse by American troops.

The real face of the occupation is nowhere more clearly seen than in the city of Fallujah. In November it was largely destroyed in order to crush the resistance groups using the city as a base for armed struggle against the US forces and the interim government. The US estimate of the Iraqi death toll is over 1,600, though the Red Cross has estimated 6,000. More than 250,000 Fallujah citizens have been turned into refugees inside their own country.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/iraq-j08.shtml