NEWS FLASH: Sad­dam Hus­sein won the bal­lot tues­day in Iraq with 100 per­cent of the vote, accord­ing to this arti­cle in the New York Times. As the head­line yes­ter­day on ABC​News​.com said: “U.S. skep­ti­cal.“
I should say so! Reg­u­lar read­ers — both of you — will recall I reported on this last week and talked about the rea­sons for hold­ing the ref­er­en­dum now. But what’s most inter­est­ing to me, for some odd rea­son, is that Sad­dam got 99.96 per­cent of the vote in 1995, and 100 per­cent now. Per­haps the war threat from Amer­ica has ral­lied Iraqis around their leader?
But a bet­ter ques­tion is this: What hap­pened to the 0.04 per­cent — about 3,600 peo­ple, accord­ing to the Times — who voted “no” in 1995? Were they sui­ci­dal or just stu­pid? No doubt they have paid for their mis­take.
Of course this was hardly a free and fair bal­lot, and I should think that every per­son on the planet, except maybe those liv­ing under the North Korean régime, can see through this sham. But it’s an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non that Sad­dam feels the need to legit­imize his rule of fear.
“With a leader such as this,” asked a Bedouin tribal elder at the end of the Times piece, “how could Iraqis want to say any­thing but yes?“
Indeed.