About Those Iraqi Elections We Were Cheering About

It appears there are no results that have been acknowledged from said elections. The crickets chirp in the mainstream media. Leila Fadel, the Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, blogs about the situation from Iraq:

Preliminary results aren’t expected until Thursday and final results won’t be available for weeks. But it hasn’t stopped parties from declaring victory.

Already people are battling over fraud and declaring winners and losers. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq spent the past few days going back and forth, declaring victory in southern provinces and then calling it unclear. Currently they control most of the southern provinces.

In Anbar tribal fighters flooded the streets on Monday with accusations of fraud against their Sunni rival the Iraqi Islamic Party. Tribal leaders threatened to take revenge if results declared the wrong people the winner i.e. not them.

Ugh! Stability seems to be dangling from a thread. If/when the chaos starts up again, there will be calls for the US to stay beyond 2011. Just wait.

The Americans have to end this. It won't be clean.