The citizens of Sadaam Hussein's home town are so very, very, angry at Bush that they are going to vote in Thursday's election!!!
From an International Herald Tribune article, :
An angry Sunni town gets set to vote [/] By Edward Wong The New York Times [/] TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2005
TIKRIT, Iraq Inside a villa off the main street here, two campaign managers watched the leader of their political party, Mishaan al-Jubouri, pop up Tuesday afternoon on his own satellite channel, as a program showed him walking through a primary school that he had financed.
"All the people who boycotted the last elections will vote for Mishaan," said one of the men, Awad Khalaf, pointing to the television. "He's the voice of this city."
[…]"The Sunnis have suffered enough from this government," Ibrahim said, referring to the political dominance of the Shiites. "They governed us for one year and look what they've done to us. What will happen if they rule us for four years?"
Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, is as unlikely a place as any in Iraq for a last-minute surge of political activity before parliamentary elections on Thursday. But frustrated by the rule of the conservative Shiites, fearful of their Iranian-trained militias and galvanized by anger over mass detentions - especially given the revelations of prisoner mistreatment - the Sunni Arabs are working feverishly to get out the vote, even though they largely boycotted the January elections for a transitional government.
Posters with candidates' faces are plastered all over the main boulevard and by the gates of those schools that will serve as polling stations. Campaign volunteers trudge through neighborhoods handing out flyers. American commanders have been meeting daily with the mayor and Iraqi officers to forge a plan for securing the polling sites, 33 in the greater Tikrit area and 19 in the city itself.
[…]U.S. and Iraqi officials say they expect a high turnout in Tikrit and the rest of the northern Sunni areas, similar to the flood of voters that materialized during the constitutional referendum in October.
"Most of the leaders feel abandoned by the national Iraqi government," said Captain Chris Ortega, 28, the head civil affairs officer for the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division, charged with controlling Tikrit. "They feel that because this is Saddam's hometown and province, they're being punished by the national government. They feel they're not getting the proper allocation of resources."
Sunni Arab participation in the elections is the cornerstone of U.S. hopes for subduing the Sunni-led insurgency and, consequently, a drawdown of the U.S. troops here. If Sunni disaffection can be channeled into the political arena, officials say, then perhaps insurgents will begin laying down their arms.
Hard-line Sunni Arab candidates such as Jubouri are promising the electorate here that they will help push out the Americans and dampen the power of the religious Shiites. [My ellipses and emphasis]
