As some early numbers come in from last Thursday’s poll in Iraq, it seems that the Iraqi people have shown exactly what they think of the man that the US initially tried to foist on their nation as their new leader – the same man that the neoconservatives in the Bush administration used to reinforce the lies that got the war started in the first place – the secular Ahmed Chalabi, looks like he now won’t even be getting a seat in the new Iraqi parliament after getting less than half of one percent of the vote in Baghdad.

It also seems that that other Iraqi criminal and accused murderer of captured insurgents and ex-prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has not fared much better. His coalition party, the Iraqi List, has so far shown only about 14% of the poll.

The US, however, will no doubt be delighted to learn that the religious parties, particularly the Shiite groups, are doing very well in early counting. And, of course, in the appropriate regions, the Sunnis aren’t doing too badly either. Problem is, though, the Shiites are going to be reluctant to let the Sunnis in on the new government, especially if it’s the religious Shiites that get up. This means more insurgency, which means the US will be in no rush to drawdown too many troops thus maintaining their hold on the region.

Democracy running rampant through the region? I think not! The only thing running rampant through the region are American troops.

[extract from the Adelaide Advertiser]

Outlining other strengths of the SA defence industry, Senator Hill said the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) - consisting of two over-the-horizon radars - might be used as part of Australia's contribution to the U.S.'s so-called Star Wars missile shield.

The two over-the-horizon radars are jointly operated from the JORN Coordination Centre at RAAF Base Edinburgh by the No. 1 Radar Surveillance Unit.

Trials of the JORN last year for missile defence proved it was successful in detecting a target.

This involved detecting ballistic missiles during the "early boost phase", allowing earlier interception.

Two days later Minister Hill revealed, while announcing the placement of the AEGIS order, that unless Australia had taken this action Lockheed-Martin would have need to shut down its AEGIS production line, telling The Advertiser that

"Placing the order . . . allows the U.S. to continue manufacturing without halting its production line, bringing about greater efficiency and achieving considerable savings," he said. "The purchase will also maximise opportunity for Australian industry to provide sub-systems such as communications, electronic warfare, sonar, electro-optical sensors and other equipment."

It's good to know that, even though we don't have a final design for the ships yet, we know what we'll shoot from them.

Last Thursday the Pentagon extolled the success of it's Southern Hemispheric Missile Shield trial.

[extract from The Advertiser]

The latest test in the Pacific was designed chiefly to evaluate the performance of the interceptor missile's rocket motor system and Raytheon Co-built "exoatmospheric kill vehicle", the bit designed to smash into the target warhead and pulverise it in space, MDA said.

It also successfully tested, among other things, silo support equipment, the agency said.

Last February, a ground support arm in the silo malfunctioned because of hinge corrosion caused by what MDA later said had been "salt air fog" that entered the underground silo.

Boeing said in a statement that the interceptor will be flown against a live target in subsequent tests.

The flight test yesterday validated the system's ability to track, acquire and provide the interceptor with the data for a "hit-to-kill" intercept, Chicago-based Boeing said.

All told, the United States is spending roughly $US9 billion ($11.95 billion) a year to develop a layered missile shield, including components based at sea and in space. The shield is designed to knock out the type of ocean-leaping missile that could be tipped with a nuclear, chemical or germ warhead.

In  the dramatic public competition for the winning of the AWD contract... two state governments toe-to-toe in the media, complete with Adelaide-base journo-terrorists invading Melbourne to present the case for South Australia. The Advertiser journalists were lead in the charge by Craig Bildstien, former Liberal Member for Mildura and ex press-secretary for Chris Gallus, the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

I had the privelege of hearing South Australian Premier Mike Rann announcing the AWD cpmtract being awarded to Adelaide, telling everyone how when his office received the news "We all shook hands and said "mission accomplished' ". The implication to the South Australian public was that it was the State's Labour Government that had won the deal. Hill didn't have much to say at the time.

Nowadays the relationship is a little more tense. When Senator Hill announced on Thursday that Adelaide was to receive a new 1,200 battallion. Deputy Premier Foley was caught unawares, telling Adelaide ABC's Matthew Abraham and David Bevin that the announcement, though known to be due sometime in the future (nice to know somebody in the Premier's Department has discoverd the internet) was not expected at that time.

As South Australia gears up for an election next March, the job creations Rann's Defence State are going to be loudly proclaimed as a vote-getter. The question is exactly how much of the acquisition of defence contracts is directly attributable to the Federal Liberal Government, the State Labor Government, and the State's former Liberal Government.

It obvious looking at Hill's statements, at a time when Rann had only been in office for six months, that planning for our involvement in the AEGIS program had been developing for much longer than that. In fact, it's been years since the US government requested three ships to participate in the missile shield program.

 Six months ago I wrote an open letter to Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, saying that,

 I share your sense of having participated in a foregone conclusion. Victoria tried hard to win the warships, but as long as the plans created by the Bush Administration and relayed by multinational defence and energy corporations to and through the Australian Federal Government continue on a predetermined implementation schedule, the whims of any State's comparitively tiny political muscle will only be considered in the form of providing crumbs and scraps left over from the main meal.

Nothing that's happened since then has changed my mind.  The one thing I was missing is that if i'm right, a key issue in the next South Australian election consists of an untrustworthy amount of grandstanding by an actor with a very small part.

As long as the election result doesn't affect US Foreign Policy, the Bush Regime wouldn't care who won.  However, it's mystifying that the SA Liberal party, surely able to see what's going on, aren't opposing Rann's publicity campaign.

The election in Iraq yesterday is being hailed a success. Well, the election, in terms of actual turnout – apparently around 70% – may well have been a success as elections go, but so far that’s all there has been. So far the only thing that as been successful is the management of the actual election. The results, however, will be the real telling of whether or not the election was a success.

All parties involved in this election have encouraged their respective voter blocs to turn out for the election – which, of course, is why the turnout has been high. However a closer look at the leaders of the various factions contending for power soon reveals that ‘democracy’ per se is of little or no interest to any of them.

The two secular Shiite contenders, ex-Ba’ath Party activist, hard-man and accused murderer of resistance fighters, Ayad Allawi, and convicted fraudster and proven liar who fed the lies to the Pentagon neoconservatives in order to start the war in the first place, Ahmad Chalabi, are both men who in the past have shown no respect whatsoever for ‘democracy’. The two Shiite religious contenders, Moktada al-Sadr and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, apart from being fierce rivals of each other, also have shown little interest in ‘democracy’. Al-Sadr’s main interests are ridding the nation of the invaders and creating a ‘strong’ central government, while al-Hakim would prefer a theocratic Islamic government with close ties to Iran; not very much interest here in ‘democracy’.

 
The Sunnis are represented by Tarik al-Hashemi, who heads up a Sunni alliance that believes that Iraq should stay as one and, again, has little or no interest in democracy.

Finally the Kurds are represented by Jalal Talabani, the current Iraqi President, and Massoud Barzani, an avid Kurdish nationalist. Both are more interested in Kurdish independence than Iraqi democracy.

The election is merely a tool for all of the contenders to get their respective feet under the table in order to jockey for political power and leverage. The new government, if and when it is able to sort itself out, will not last its allotted four years. The factions alone within each grouping will not allow any form of Western style ‘democracy’ to prevail, and that’s before we start talking about any parliamentary groupings or coalition. Without strong alliances, alliances built without US assistance which will otherwise be seen as serving America’s self interest, there cannot even be any sustainable government, let alone ‘democracy’.

The bottom line is: there may be a period of relative quiet while the sides sort themselves out but it will soon descend into a chaotic free-for-all battle again as temporary coalitions break down and each side demands more of what they consider is their share of power.

In the end there will simply be more of what there is now; insurgents wanting to get rid of the occupiers and plunderers, militias and warlords with their death squads wanting their piece of the corruption action, and the US getting exactly what they wanted in the first place, a nation in turmoil that they can use as an excuse to stay there while they control the region, the oil and protect Israel.

Democracy? Election day is about the only day the Iraqi people will get to see ‘democracy’. They’ve had their day.

Bush was trying to shift blame for his errors of judgement to the intelligence community. Never mind that he and his senior colleagues cherry-picked the intelligence (as did John Howard and Alexander Downer) to justify the war.

A candid Bush or, put another way, a president who obfuscates less, provides an interesting spectacle. In television appearances and set-piece speeches, he appears uncomfortable with his new role, since admission of error is an alien concept for this President.

The winds of change are rustling the petticoats at The Australian, Wayne. Rupert can't risk hanging on to Bush for much longer, now they've had to concede to McCain's amendments.

This was the second time in less than 24 hours that Congressional concerns about torture - and the damage to America's image wrought by allegations of secret C.I.A. detentions and interrogations - had overwhelmed the Bush administration's intent on keeping an array of tools to wage a difficult, high-stakes battle against terrorism.

I thought I heard a rumour that our national daily is putting together a glowing report on the Perdana Gobal Peace Forum, where Bob Hawke made a speech. Some of the other speakers were Daniel Ellsberg, Tariq Ali, Helen Caldicott, George Gall... Oh, stop it, TK. You know there won't even be a full transcript of Hawke's speech, because it's not in Alan Jones' script. I think I'll subscribe to Aljazeera.

I'm a bit surprised not to see any mention of the Iraqi elections here. It's a big story in all the Aussie and overseas media. Why no mention of it here, given how Iraq has loomed so large in Webdiary discussions over the past year?

I, for one, am extremely pleased and heartened to see the high turnout in Iraq, especially in Sunni districts. The election is a huge victory for the Iraqi people, and a stinging rebuke to the Zarqawistas and their supporters.

To me, this development means Iraq is well on the way in its transition to democracy. The insurgency is far from over, the Iraqi government will now have the legitimacy to fight the Zarqawistas that no foreign forces could ever have. The Sunnis have realised it's better to join the government, even as a minority, than to keep trying to fight the transition to participative government.

There's a long way to go to be sure, but this is an encouraging step.

See State of Iraq: An Updateand accompanying graphic in Wednesday's New York Times.