Elections Represented Hope for Iraqis

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2006 – A year ago today was Election Day in Iraq. For the first time, millions of Iraqis had a real choice in their government, and they took advantage of it.

President Bush, visiting with Iraqis voting absentee from the United States, lauded Iraqis for “being courageous and in defying the terrorists and refusing to be cowed into not voting.”

“I believe freedom is universal,” Bush said. “I believe the Iraqi citizen cares just as much about freedom and living a free life as the American citizen does.”

Under Saddam Hussein, there was one choice in so-called elections: him. Now Iraqis have gone to the polls to elect 275 people, 25 percent of whom had to be women, to represent them.

The ballot for the Dec. 15, 2005, election was incredibly complicated, with hundreds of candidates running for office. Some were affiliated with nascent political parties, others ran on their own. Some parties were affiliated with a particular sect or tribe. Others cut across ethnic and religious boundaries.

Election Day in Iraq was also a triumph for the Iraqi security forces. "All the time and money you have spent training the Iraqi army, you harvest it today," Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Mobdir Hatim Hothya al-Delemy told then-3rd Infantry Division Commander U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Webster following a tour of polling places that day.

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(Photo: An Iraqi boy looks on as his father dips his finger in the purple ink that indicates he has voted for the new government at a polling station in Hayji, Iraq, on Dec. 15, 2005. Iraqi citizens voted to elect the first free, permanent parliamentary government that will lead this new democracy for the next four years. U.S. Air Force photo)