So the Afghan people will have the chance to prove they are free and self-governing this week.
Or at least that is the story the Obama team and most of the U.S. media are shoveling.
After the Bush team successfully carried off similar scams in Iraq, it is not surprising that the new regime in America would follow suit in Kabul.
The Afghan government has already imposed massive censorship to blot out reports of violence on election day. Perhaps fraud and corruption will be redefined as violence….
Author Eric Margolis has an excellent analysis of the Afghan election farce here.
I hope that the Obamanistas at least have the originality to use something other than “purple fingers” as the symbol of their Bold New Democracy in Iraq, oops, I meant Afghanistan.
(Sorry about the confusion…for me it’s sort of like the ending of Animal Farm. I look from the pigs to the men to the pigs to the men…and can’t really tell them apart.)
From BBC:
A tribal elder and former military commander in Baghlan province described how the system works.
As a key local leader he is able to persuade large numbers of people to vote for one candidate or another.
He says that he and other local leaders have been approached by teams from the two leading contenders in this election and offered money.
“If one candidate gives $10,000, then the other gives $20,000 and a third one offers even more. It has become such a lucrative and competitive business. I don’t know where they get their money from.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8207315.stm
Yeah, where could all that money possibly come from? What a mystery.
AlpoWolf -I guess the Obama administration doesn’t have any Karl Roves around to come up with finger painting ideas.
Tom – Excellent info on BBC
Sounds like votes in AFghanistan are even more expensive than they are in West Virginia.
It would be nice to see a little two-line bar graph, one depicting the amount of U.S. Dollars going toward the “Cash For Clunkers” program and the other showing all the money tossed down the ratholes of Afghanistan and Iraq in something we might call “Cash for a Self-Clunking” . It aint Democracy Building, Its Democracy Demolition.