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02/01/2005:

""Free" Iraqis Still Waiting for the Wind of Change"

by Robert Fisk
The gale tore into Baghdad yesterday, stripping the walls of election posters, sending miniature whirlwinds between the shuttered shops of Rashid Street, giving new meaning to the black hoods and masks worn by the policemen at Tahrir Square.

Tahrir--"independence"--is a word which a lot of people voted for on Sunday; not for "democracy" as the Western media would have it, but for freedom; freedom to speak, freedom to vote, freedom from the Americans.

They were in Baghdad, too, yesterday, driving their Humvees through Karada, circling the city in their Apaches and their little bee-like Sioux spotter helicopters.

For days we will have to wait for the election results. A spokesman for the Shia Muslim Iraqi National Alliance is quoted in The New York Times as saying that the Americans and British say his party might have won more than 50 per cent of the vote--the Shia Republic has come of age!--and it's all the talk of Baghdad when the people hear it in Arabic on their own networks from the Gulf. But how could the Americans know now that the INA has won more than half the votes?
Full Article: counterpunch.org