will vote for food; Woolsey

According to William Rivers Pitt, many Iraqis reported that they voted to keep their food rations from being taken away:

Dahr Jamail, writing for Inter Press Service, reported that "Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies. Just days before the election, 52 year-old Amin Hajar, who owns an auto garage in central Baghdad, had said, 'I'll vote because I can't afford to have my food ration cut. If that happened, me and my family would starve to death.'"

'Will Vote For Food' is not a spectacular billboard for the export of democracy.

"Where there was a large turnout," continued Jamail, "the motivation behind the voting and the processes both appeared questionable. The Kurds up north were voting for autonomy, if not independence. In the south and elsewhere Shias were competing with Kurds for a bigger say in the 275-member national assembly. In some places like Mosul the turnout was heavier than expected. But many of the voters came from outside, and identity checks on voters appeared lax. Others spoke of vote-buying bids.

If this is true, it is shameful beyond words.

Meanwhile, neocon James Woolsey thinks that anyone who can be "associated" with Islamists must be intimidated by the US government:

Former CIA Director James Woolsey told a congressional panel Wednesday that the U.S. government should treat the ideological bedfellows of Islamic terrorism the same way it treated Communists and their supporters during the Cold War.

Drawing parallels between what he said were two totalitarian ideologies, Communism and Islamic extremism, Woolsey noted that even at the height of the struggle with the Soviet Union, "We could not make it illegal to be a member of the American Communist Party.

"Congress tried and the Supreme Court struck it down," he told a hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

But, he added, lawmakers were able to make "American Communists' lives very complicated and very difficult by making them register, by all sorts of steps."

Woolsey's suggestion was greeted with horror by one student of the period.

Sam Walker, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and author of a history of the ACLU, said that the registration scheme introduced in the 1954 Communist Control Act had "done nothing to improve national security."

"On the contrary it may have damaged national security, by inhibiting an open debate about U.S. foreign policy," he told United Press International. He said it "resulted in the serious harassment of people for simply expressing a political viewpoint."

Walker said that groups that had nothing to do with Communism -- the peace movement and even civil-rights activists -- "were labeled wholesale."

"It was guilt by association," he said.

Yikes!