[Peace-discuss] Fraudulent votes

[unionyes]

Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It.
> By FLYNT LEVERETT AND HILLARY MANN LEVERETT

Where have I heard this " Get over it " line before ?

Oh I remember, it was when the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were 
stolen in the U.S..
And let's not forget the stolen Mexican presidential election in 2006 ( see 
Greg Pallast's article " Florida con Salsa ". ).

The smoke hasn't cleared yet in Iran, but there seems to be a LOT of angry 
people in the streets.
But regardless, for anyone in the U.S. government to be " concerned " about 
possible election fraud is laughable !

David J.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 9:25 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fraudulent votes


> [The US media ('left' & 'right', as we laughably say) tonight concentrate 
> on demonstrations in Iran, about a possibly fraudulent vote, and ignore 
> the fraudulent vote in US House of Representatives -- fraudulent, because 
> the electorate installed this Congress (and this President) to end the 
> war.  And they're doing just the opposite.  In the US, policy is insulated 
> from politics. Elsewhere -- perhaps even in Iran -- politics have some 
> effect. "No one knows what is to happen, and who can tell anyone what the 
> future holds?  The toil of fools wears them out, for they do not even know 
> the way to town.  Alas for you, O land, when your king is a servant, and 
> your princes feast in the morning!" (Ecclesiastes 10:14b-16).  --CGE]
>
>
> Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It.
> By FLYNT LEVERETT AND HILLARY MANN LEVERETT
> June 16, 2009 "Politico"
>
> Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have 
> dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 
> 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.
>
> They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this 
> year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received 
> in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced 
> former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran 
> experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their 
> preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.
>
> Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic 
> Republic has a 30-year history of highly contested and competitive 
> elections at the presidential, parliamentary and local levels. 
> Manipulation has always been there, as it is in many other countries.
>
> But upsets occur — as, most notably, with Mohammed Khatami’s surprise 
> victory in the 1997 presidential election. Moreover, “blowouts” also 
> occur — as in Khatami’s reelection in 2001, Ahmadinejad’s first victory in 
> 2005 and, we would argue, this year.
>
> Like much of the Western media, most American “Iran experts” overstated 
> Mir Hossein Mousavi’s “surge” over the campaign’s final weeks. More 
> important, they were oblivious — as in 2005 — to Ahmadinejad’s 
> effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American “Iran 
> experts” missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having 
> won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents — especially 
> his debate with Mousavi.
>
> Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated 
> privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the 
> debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad’s provocatively 
> impressive performance and Mousavi’s desultory one had boosted the 
> incumbent’s standing. Ahmadinejad’s charge that Mousavi was supported by 
> Rafsanjani’s sons — widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt 
> figures — seemed to play well with voters.
>
> Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s criticism that Mousavi’s reformist supporters, 
> including Khatami, had been willing to suspend Iran’s uranium enrichment 
> program and had won nothing from the West for doing so tapped into popular 
> support for the program — and had the added advantage of being true.
>
> More fundamentally, American “Iran experts” consistently underestimated 
> Ahmadinejad’s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; 
> most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce 
> results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday’s 
> election by a Western organization that was transparent about its 
> methodology — a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based 
> Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 — found Ahmadinejad running 20 
> points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised 
> debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done 
> well while Mousavi did poorly.
>
> American “Iran experts” assumed that “disastrous” economic conditions in 
> Iran would undermine Ahmadinejad’s reelection prospects. But the 
> International Monetary Fund projects that Iran’s economy will actually 
> grow modestly this year (when the economies of most Gulf Arab states are 
> in recession). A significant number of Iranians — including the 
> religiously pious, lower-income groups, civil servants and pensioners — 
> appear to believe that Ahmadinejad’s policies have benefited them.
>
> And, while many Iranians complain about inflation, the TFT poll found that 
> most Iranian voters do not hold Ahmadinejad responsible. The “Iran 
>  experts” further argue that the high turnout on June 12 — 82 percent of 
> the electorate — had to favor Mousavi. But this line of analysis reflects 
> nothing more than assumptions.
>
> Some “Iran experts” argue that Mousavi’s Azeri background and “Azeri 
> accent” mean that he was guaranteed to win Iran’s Azeri-majority 
> provinces; since Ahmadinejad did better than Mousavi in these areas, fraud 
> is the only possible explanation.
>
> But Ahmadinejad himself speaks Azeri quite fluently as a consequence of 
> his eight years serving as a popular and successful official in two 
> Azeri-majority provinces; during the campaign, he artfully quoted Azeri 
> and Turkish poetry — in the original — in messages designed to appeal to 
> Iran’s Azeri community. (And we should not forget that the supreme leader 
> is Azeri.) The notion that Mousavi was somehow assured of victory in 
> Azeri-majority provinces is simply not grounded in reality.
>
> With regard to electoral irregularities, the specific criticisms made by 
> Mousavi — such as running out of ballot paper in some precincts and not 
> keeping polls open long enough (even though polls stayed open for at least 
> three hours after the announced closing time) — could not, in themselves, 
> have tipped the outcome so clearly in Ahmadinejad’s favor.
>
> Moreover, these irregularities do not, in themselves, amount to electoral 
> fraud even by American legal standards. And, compared with the U.S. 
> presidential election in Florida in 2000, the flaws in Iran’s electoral 
> process seem less significant.
>
> In the wake of Friday’s election, some “Iran experts” — perhaps feeling 
> burned by their misreading of contemporary political dynamics in the 
> Islamic Republic — argue that we are witnessing a “conservative coup d’état,” 
> aimed at a complete takeover of the Iranian state.
>
> But one could more plausibly suggest that if a “coup” is being attempted, 
> it has been mounted by the losers in Friday’s election. It was Mousavi, 
> after all, who declared victory on Friday even before Iran’s polls closed. 
> And three days before the election, Mousavi supporter Rafsanjani published 
> a letter criticizing the leader’s failure to rein in Ahmadinejad’s resort 
> to “such ugly and sin-infected phenomena as insults, lies and false 
> allegations.” Many Iranians took this letter as an indication that the 
> Mousavi camp was concerned their candidate had fallen behind in the 
> campaign’s closing days.
>
> In light of these developments, many politicians and “Iran experts” argue 
> that the Obama administration cannot now engage the “illegitimate” 
> Ahmadinejad regime. Certainly, the administration should not appear to be 
> trying to “play” in the current controversy in Iran about the election. In 
> this regard, President Barack Obama’s comments on Friday, a few hours 
> before the polls closed in Iran, that “just as has been true in Lebanon, 
> what can be true in Iran as well is that you’re seeing people looking at 
> new possibilities” was extremely maladroit.
>
> From Tehran’s perspective, this observation undercut the credibility of 
> Obama’s acknowledgement, in his Cairo speech earlier this month, of U.S. 
> complicity in overthrowing a democratically elected Iranian government and 
> restoring the shah in 1953.
>
> The Obama administration should vigorously rebut any argument against 
> engaging Tehran following Friday’s vote. More broadly, Ahmadinejad’s 
> victory may force Obama and his senior advisers to come to terms with the 
> deficiencies and internal contradictions in their approach to Iran. Before 
> the Iranian election, the Obama administration had fallen for the same 
> illusion as many of its predecessors — the illusion that Iranian politics 
> is primarily about personalities and finding the right personality to deal 
> with. That is not how Iranian politics works.
>
> The Islamic Republic is a system with multiple power centers; within that 
> system, there is a strong and enduring consensus about core issues of 
> national security and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear program and 
> relations with the United States. Any of the four candidates in Friday’s 
> election would have continued the nuclear program as Iran’s president; 
> none would agree to its suspension.
>
> Any of the four candidates would be interested in a diplomatic opening 
> with the United States, but that opening would need to be comprehensive, 
> respectful of Iran’s legitimate national security interests and regional 
> importance, accepting of Iran’s right to develop and benefit from the full 
> range of civil nuclear technology — including pursuit of the nuclear fuel 
> cycle — and aimed at genuine rapprochement.
>
> Such an approach would also, in our judgment, be manifestly in the 
> interests of the United States and its allies throughout the Middle East. 
> It is time for the Obama administration to get serious about pursuing this 
> approach — with an Iranian administration headed by the reelected 
> President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
>
> Flynt Leverett directs The New America Foundation’s Iran Project and 
> teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State university. Hillary 
> Mann Leverett is CEO of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy. Both 
> worked for many years on Middle East issues for the U.S. government, 
> including as members of the National Security Council staff.
>
> http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22846.htm
>
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