{"id":1255,"date":"2005-12-15T21:54:41","date_gmt":"2005-12-16T03:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1255"},"modified":"2005-12-15T21:56:19","modified_gmt":"2005-12-16T03:56:19","slug":"iraqi-voting-leave-country-in-purple-haze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1255","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi Voting Leave Country in Purple Haze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions upon millions of Iraqis, a turnout far better than could have been reasonably hoped for, turned out to vote today for a freely elected parliament<\/a> and another step toward a free democracy.<\/p>\n

Millions of Iraqis, from tribal sheiks to entire families with children in tow, turned out Thursday to choose a parliament in a mostly peaceful election – among the freest ever in the Arab world.<\/p>\n

So many Sunni Arabs voted that ballots ran out in some places. The strong participation by Sunnis, the backbone of the insurgency, bolstered U.S. hopes that the election could produce a broad-based government capable of ending the daily suicide attacks and other violence that have ravaged the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

Difficult times lie ahead, however. The coalition of religious Shiite parties that dominates the current government is expected to win the biggest portion of the 275 seats, but will almost certainly need to compromise with rival factions, with widely differing views, to form a government.<\/p>\n

Up to 11 million of the nation’s 15 million registered voters took part, election officials estimated, though they had no official turnout figure.<\/p>\n

Many Sunnis said they voted to register their opposition to the Shiite-led government and to speed the end of the U.S. military presence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, to understand today’s voting and the Iraqi parliamentary election process, PoliBlog<\/a>‘s Dr. Steven Taylor has gathered together two posts, here<\/a> and here<\/a>, that together comprise what could best be described as an Iraqi Elections for Dummies guide.<\/p>\n

The right side of the political blogosphere is awash with images of purple-stained fingers, with Gateway Pundit<\/a> and Michelle Malkin<\/a> providing thorough and oft-updated collections of bloggings and news coverage.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Protein Wisdom<\/a>‘s Jeff Goldstein and John Noonan at the Officers’ Club<\/a> examine the paucity of coverage from the left side of the blogosphere. I can only take that as a sure sign of another successful election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millions upon millions of Iraqis, a turnout far better than could have been reasonably hoped for, turned out to vote today for a freely elected parliament and another step toward a free democracy. Millions of Iraqis, from tribal sheiks to entire families with children in tow, turned out Thursday to choose a parliament in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogosphere","category-middle-east","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}