WASHINGTON -Lynne Cheney had a history lesson for elementary school children Tuesday, likening this week's parliamentary elections in Iraq to America's own early struggle for democracy.
"Two hundred and seventeen years ago, we held our first vote under our Constitution," Vice President Dick Cheney's wife said. "We started then on the path the Iraqis are walking now."
Mrs. Cheney was the latest Bush administration figure sent to marshal support for the United States' Iraq policy. She was speaking to elementary school children at two Washington-area military installations — the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va., and at Fort Belvoir, Va.
You have to love how the Republicans are trying to rewrite history here. The vice president's wife is trying to brainwash school children with the idea that the elections in Iraq are similar to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. I wonder how much of the early American history that Lynne Cheney even remembers? If I recall my own early American history, we actually kicked out the foreign occupation (The British redcoats), in our own insurgency (The American Revolutionary War), with the help of our own "terrorist leaders," (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, James Madison, John Adams). So now what do we have in Iraq? Let's see, we have a foreign occupation (U.S. troops in Iraq), an insurgency (al Qaida, former Baathists, religious Sunni estremists, and who knows what else), which is also controlled by "terrorist leaders" (al Qaida leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). And while we're talking about Iraq, here's another current news story from Yahoo News:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the last day of campaigning, a roadside bomb killed four American soldiers Tuesday and gunmen assassinated a candidate for parliament in this week's election. A Shiite politician escaped injury in a bombing south of Baghdad.
The U.S. ambassador, meanwhile, said Tuesday the total number of abused prisoners found so far in jails run by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry came to about 120. The statement by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad reinforced Sunni Arab claims of mistreatment by security forces — a major issue among Sunnis in the election campaign.
Despite the violence, more than 1,000 Sunni clerics issued a religious decree instructing their followers to vote Thursday, boosting American hopes the election will encourage more members of the disaffected minority to abandon the insurgency.
A U.S. military statement said four soldiers from Task Force Baghdad died in a blast northwest of the capital, but did not specify the location. That brought to at least 2,149 the number of U.S. service members to have died since the start of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
At least 12 of the 15 American soldiers who have died since Dec. 8 were killed in the Baghdad area, according to U.S. military records.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed Sunni Arab candidate Mezher al-Dulaimi as he was filling his car at a gas station in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad. Al-Dulaimi took part in a conference last month in Cairo that was attended by representatives of
Iraq's major factions.
A prominent Shiite politician, Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, escaped injury Tuesday when a bomb exploded near his convoy in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. No one in al-Sagheer's party was injured but one vehicle was damaged, police said.
You know Lynne, I don't seem to recall terrorist attacks occurring on American soil when our Constitution was undergoing its ratification, nor do I remember hearing about abuses of American "insurgent" prisoners in secret prisons. And I also don't think early American politicians, who supported the Constitution, were gunned down by opponents against the Constitution. But I guess these contradictions don't really matter, when trying to feed pro-Bush-Republican propoganda to school children and the American public.
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