From: ouy@foddy.co.uk   
      
   Still they won't admit they got Iraq wrong   
   By Con Coughlin   
   (Filed: 06/02/2005)   
    Sunday Telegraph   
      
      
   Last Sunday evening, as Iraq's historic election was drawing to a close, I   
   was invited to the BBC's Television Centre at White City to discuss the   
   day's events. Sitting in the green room, I came across Dr Salah al-Shaikhly,   
   Iraq's ambassador to London and an old friend from his days in the exiled   
   Iraqi opposition movement. Dr al-Shaikhly, who is a close ally of Ayad   
   Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, could not wait for his appearance to   
   acclaim the success of the first truly independent elections that had taken   
   place since Iraq's creation by the British in the 1920s.   
      
      
   "It's time to make those doom-mongers eat their words," he said. Like many   
   who still held on to the belief that overthrowing Saddam's brutal tyranny   
   was worthwhile, the Iraqi ambassador had been deeply irritated by the   
   blatant bias of much of the media coverage that had attended the build-up to   
   the vote. "It's as though they were willing the election to fail and Iraq to   
   be plunged into chaos."   
   Al-Shaikhly had particular reason to celebrate the election's successful   
   conclusion. Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, his cousin, who was one of the founder   
   members of the Ba'ath in Iraq and the party's first foreign minister, had   
   been murdered by Saddam's security forces after falling out with the Iraqi   
   dictator in the 1970s. For all those who suffered under Saddam, the fact   
   that the elections were taking place at all was sweet revenge for the 35   
   years of tyranny the deposed dictator had imposed on his country.   
   Not that this view was at all reflected in the BBC's coverage last Sunday   
   night. Rather than applauding the extraordinary bravery of the eight million   
   or so Iraqi voters who braved the threats of Abu Musab al-Masawi, al-Qaeda's   
   point man in Iraq, the BBC led with the negative line, "Violence mars Iraqi   
   elections." There had, it is true, been suicide bomb attacks on polling   
   stations in Baghdad and elsewhere, killing more than 30 people, but the   
   death toll was modest by comparison with what al-Masawi and his cohorts had   
   threatened.   
   Some people are just bad losers. The BBC, together with a significant   
   section of the media, could not bring itself to acknowledge that Iraq's   
   liberation from Saddam was being ratified by the democratic process. When a   
   reporter said that voter turn-out exceeded 60 per cent, far higher than   
   expected, I heard one of the producers remark, sotto voce, "Yeah, yeah,   
   yeah."   
   I presumed that they were finding it hard to reconcile the day's relatively   
   successful outcome with the apocalyptic predictions made earlier that day by   
   Robert Fisk, that Cassandra of Middle East reporting. Fisk's take on last   
   weekend's election preparations was characteristically alarmist. "They are   
   waiting for the rivers of blood", proclaimed a banner headline over his   
   piece on the front page of The Independent on Sunday. Sorry, Fisky, wrong   
   again! Both the Tigris and Euphrates retain their traditional effluent-grey   
   hue. But then, this was no more than we should expect from a reporter who   
   confidently predicted the evisceration of coalition forces by Saddam's   
   Republican Guard during the 1991 Gulf War.   
   Nor were the media the only offenders in willing failure on Iraq. "The   
   election in Iraq is held against a dark and dangerous background," trumpeted   
   Robin Cook, Douglas Hurd and Menzies Campbell in a shared offering to The   
   Times last weekend. Their argument was essentially that, because the Sunnis   
   were boycotting the election, it would lead to greater tension in Iraq,   
   perhaps even civil war.   
   Like so many of the arguments guaranteeing the election's failure, it was   
   based on a false premise. Iraqi Sunnis are not just confined to the   
   notorious triangle around Ramadi and Fallujah, the heartland of the   
   anti-coalition insurgency. The Kurds, who represent about 20 per cent of the   
   Iraqi population, are Sunni Muslims - or perhaps Messrs Cook, Hurd and   
   Campbell do not regard the Kurds as being Iraqi? Anyway, when you add the 30   
   per cent from the Sunni triangle who voted to the 100 per cent from the   
   Kurdish region, a clear majority of Sunnis participated in the election.   
   Even after the election was declared, the anti-war lobby could not find it   
   within themselves to admit defeat. Writing in the New Statesman, Lindsey   
   Hilsum, a reporter with Channel 4 News, another repository of anti-coalition   
   bias, felt almost ashamed of having to broadcast a good news story from   
   Iraq, fearing that the success of the elections in Iraq might somehow   
   benefit Tony Blair in London. "I came to Basra to report on one election,   
   but my stories may be used in the campaign for another," she complained.   
   On Newsnight on Monday night, Sir Menzies Campbell still could not   
   acknowledge the coalition's formidable achievement of bringing democracy to   
   Iraq, a fact that was joyously acclaimed by the Iraqi people as they queued   
   to vote, but not by the West's armchair war critics.   
   Campbell's response to the election was to launch yet another diatribe   
   against the war's legality, before he was pulled up sharp by the redoubtable   
   William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard in Washington, who   
   pointed out that, if Campbell had had his way, Saddam would still be in   
   power, and the Iraqis would be limited to voting for just one candidate.   
   As the week progressed and the results of the election began to emerge, it   
   was gleefully predicted by the usual suspects that the United Iraqi Alliance   
   backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's leading cleric who spent   
   many years in exile in Iran, was heading for victory at the expense of Dr   
   Allawi's "Iraq List". This would make Iraq likely to follow neighbouring   
   Iran in becoming an Islamic republic, thereby creating the much-feared "Shia   
   Crescent" stretching from Syria to Pakistan, and posing a dangerous threat   
   to the oil-rich Sunni states of the Gulf - just what the coalition sought to   
   prevent.   
   Before the doom-mongers get too carried away with this exciting prospect, a   
   few words of caution are necessary. Arab Shi'ism is very different to the   
   Iranian tradition, and despite his years in exile in Iran, Ayatollah Sistani   
   has made it clear on several occasions that he does not want a clerical   
   government in Iraq. His preference would be for a secular Shi'ite   
   politician, such as the much-maligned Dr Allawi, to run the country. Whether   
   it is Allawi or another secular Shi'ite who takes control, those who foresaw   
   an election disaster should be eating humble pie for a long time - but of   
   course they won't.   
   . Con Coughlin's updated edition of Saddam: The Secret Life has just been   
   published by Macmillan.   
      
      
   c/o ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)