Iraqis vote amid deadly attacks

Iraqis have begun voting in their second full parliamentary elections since the 2003 US-led invasion against a backdrop of deadly attacks. Around 19 million eligible voters will choose from over 6,000 candidates from 86 political groups looking to gain seats in the 325-member assembly. But even as polls opened on Sunday, attacks across the country left at least 24 people dead and 50 more wounded. The bloodiest toll was from an explosion that destroyed a residential building in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding eight more.

[Editor's Comment:] There's no reason to believe that this election will be more honest than the travesty of an election that took place in Afghanistan recently. Iraq still is under US occupation and the #1 priority for the Iraqis ought to be to unite and chase the US army out. As things stand, the US wants a government of collaborators. America's man in Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, will see to it that corruption remains high (not difficult, Iraq being an unstable and well-nigh destroyed country), and certainly high enough for Iraq to be manageable to the US as a client state. Parliamentary elections will change nothing. The US will certainly not honor the "agreement" to leave in 2011. It will stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future, or for as long as it takes for the international corporations to steal every single drop of oil from this godforsaken territory. -For this is what "Iraq" now has become. A territory. It's not a country anymore. Parliamentary elections can not change this. They're window dressing, a show put up to justify the illegal occupation ex post facto. Or, in the words of Max Steiner: "You can dress up a corpse but you can't bring it back to life."