Claims, Claims, Claims

There is a caldron of suspicion circulating about Iraq. Without the benefit of having counted the ballots, some have perpetuated the notion of fraud. Normally I would become alarmed by claims of electoral fraud, but there are some things to consider first. Who is making the claim? Answer: political parties. It's the political parties who actively campaigned against passage who are making the claims.

With passage appearing likely (again, the count isn't finished yet), could it be that political figures would stir their support base by claiming their votes were ignored? Almost sounds like Florida in 2000. Second, if there was fraud, why didn't the international monitors make any mention of such activity? It must be another "vast conspiracy" perpetrated by those evil Americans (read: Republicans).

Finally, I wonder where the expectation of failure stems from and it is clearly the media. For weeks I have read about how Sunnis were opposed to the constitution while Kurds and Shi'a were in favor. My only question is this: where does this opinion originate? Surely the Sunni political figures are not entirely representative of the entire population of Sunnis and I'd assume the same to be true regarding the Kurds and Shi'a. So for weeks and months the media has oversimplified the situation in Iraq in order to explain the goings on without using more than a paragraph. This standard background information is in every article, yet who has verified the accuracy of the information provided? After the votes are counted, we will be given the clearest picture of Iraq's public opinion.

With passage appearing likely, even in predominantly Sunnis areas, it appears that SOME Sunnis were opposed but others were not. But the media can't admit being wrong or being overly simplistic. So here come the stories about fraud because the media would never run a story which actually explained something thoroughly. They are looking for good copy and fraud makes good copy.