Partners in Peace

Millions going to the polls in Iraq demonstrated the truth of Joe Lieberman's statement:

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqis voted in a historic parliamentary election today, with strong turnout reported in Sunni Arab areas. Several explosions rocked Baghdad throughout the day, but the level of violence was low.

The heavy participation by the Sunnis, who had shunned balloting last January, bolstered U.S. hopes of calming the insurgency enough to begin withdrawing troops next year.

What a great, great day for democracy!

Estimates that 11 million of the country's 15 million registered voters took part in the election are testament to that.

President Bush said:

I want to congratulate the Iraqi citizens for being courageous and in defying the terrorists and refusing to be cowed into not voting. I believe freedom is universal. I believe the Iraqi citizen cares just as much about freedom and living a free life as the American citizen does.

Secondly, I want to thank our embassy for doing such good work there and working with the Iraqi citizens to get this vote off. And I want to thank the international community for participating in these elections. This is a major step forward in achieving our objective, which is an ally -- having a democratic Iraq, a country able to sustain itself and defend itself, a country that will be an ally in the war on terror, and a country which will send such a powerful example to others in the region, whether they live in Iran or Syria, for example.

I've assured these good Iraqi citizens that the United States will stay with them and complete this -- complete this job. They've expressed concern about listening to the commentary that we'll leave before the job is done -- they don't have to worry. We're doing the right thing. And we've got partners in peace with the Iraqi citizens.

I, too, congratulate the Iraqi people for standing up to the terrorists by daring to vote, in spite of threats by these enemies of peace and freedom.

It's a shame that the radical Left couldn't celebrate the successful election. It's unfortunate that they couldn't take pride in the freedom that our troops have brought to an oppressed people.

What did the Dems have to say about the election?

Well, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer chose to use the occasion to hold a press conference calling on Bush to address the Valerie Plame case.

Talk about clueless! It's so pathetic that I actually feel a little sorry for them.

What did the lib media have to say?

The Washington Post didn't go so far as to ignore the Iraqi election. Instead, Robin Wright wrote a piece that dismissed the significance of the day.

Again, it's pathetic!

While Iraqis were dancing in the streets, she writes about the "sobering reality":

For President Bush, the strong turnout for Iraq's election yesterday may represent the best day since the fall of Baghdad 32 months ago because all major factions participated in the political process, according to U.S. and Middle East analysts. But the sobering reality, they added, is that the vote by itself did not resolve Iraq's lingering political disputes.

After weeks of an increasingly divisive debate at home that helped sink the president's approval rating to an all-time low, the Bush administration appeared buoyed by the throngs at the polls and the low violence. Flanked in the Oval Office by six young Iraqis, all with a purple-stained finger signifying they had voted, Bush called the election a "major milestone" on the road to democracy.

...[Anthony H. Cordesman, a Persian Gulf military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,] said the vote is not the long-awaited turning point but rather a trigger for launching a new political process next year that will include amending a constitution. That, he said, will better determine whether Iraq has a chance of emerging out of turmoil.

One looming danger is that the most dedicated wings of the insurgency, the foreign fighters and Islamic extremists, may only become more determined or vicious. "The steady grind of this guerrilla war is going to go on. The elections are not relevant to it, and that's what is going to matter to the American people," warned Juan R.I. Cole, an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan.

Others acknowledged the election's success but said it came too late. "It's the best moment since Baghdad fell . . . but it's at least 18 months late," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department Iraq policy planning expert now at Lehigh University. "The fall of Saddam Hussein was a moment. This is just a moment of relief."

Although Democrats expressed hope that the election marked the beginning of a healing process in Iraq, some called for it to be made a catalyst for policy adjustments.

In a letter to the White House, 26 House Democrats -- including the minority whip and nine members of the Armed Services Committee -- outlined four principles that they said should guide U.S. policy after the election, including a significant drawdown of U.S. troops in the next 12 months and the transfer of key nation-building responsibilities to Iraq's neighbors and the international community.

Only the Dems could take such an incredible event as the overwhelmingly successful Iraqi election and turn it into a defeat, drowning in pessimism.

Of course, one could predict that the libs would disgracefully spin the Iraqi citizens' brave defiance by transforming their achievement into a negative, and in the process, belittle the historic milestone.

Truly pathetic.

Speaking of pathetic, what was John Murtha's take?

"An election's fine. I hope that a big percentage of people do vote," Murtha said. "But that's not going to change the insurgency. When we get out of there, that's going to be the turning point."

By early next year, Murtha predicted of the Bush administration, "I think they'll say the Iraqis are well trained, and they'll say we can redeploy. I think they saw that after the election, things would quiet down.

"The pressure from the public, the cost of this in personnel, in people and in money, is just too much for them to bear," Murtha said.

Those sad, miserable Dems.

PATHETIC.