The Antiwar Movement and the Iraqi Elections
From: "Action Center"


1) Election Under Occupation

The media theater called the Iraqi election is under way. U.S. television anchor people are broadcasting live from Baghdad, breathlessly describing the preparations for Sunday's display of so-called democracy. It is important to emphasive the circumstances under which this election is being held. More than 150,000 U.S. troops occupy the country, patrolling the streets with guns trained on Iraqi civilians. Iraq is under a state of emergency, with expanded police powers and a curfew.

This is and election at gunpoint, which will be supervised by U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte. Negroponte built an impressive resume as a brutal enforcer of U.S. policy through murder, rape, and torture. Negroponte served as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985; a period during which Honduras was the launching pad from which the Reagan administration conducted its violent attacks on the people of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The U.S-backed atrocities, which were condemned by the International World Court in the Hague, included kidnappings, rape, torture and killing of suspected dissidents. Reports from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Honduras alleged that Negroponte oversaw the expansion of U.S training camp and military base on Honduran territory, where the U.S. trained Contra terrorists, and where the military secretly detained, tortured and executed Honduran suspected dissidents.