DOE IN THE CLEARING

Other observers, who do not have killing on their minds, report that a buck does not send a doe anywhere; he just pauses at the edge of the clearing and checks out the area for rival bucks.

While he is doing this, doe with their fawns will carefully walk into the clearing, fully alert and watchful for danger. Doe, like all animals, are cautious but they are also mindful of the need to seek food for their young and themselves.

If they waited for the buck to decide he wasn’t in danger and followed his lead, he would hog all the good edibles once he decided there was no adversarial buck waiting to fight him.

So we were bemused by the reports (not by our media) from Iraq that when the polls opened in many places, it was women, singly and in groups of other women and their children that swarmed toward the polls. Later, the men grouped up and joined them.

Now Iraqi males as a group are not cowards so why did they wait on the women? Were they willing to sacrifice their women to insure their own safety [the hunter/killer instinct] or was it something else?

Again, we had to find the reason from the world media. Like the doe entering the clearing, women were going to the polls to qualify for food, a necessity like electricity and water, which they have been going mostly without during the occupation.

Occupation forces let it be known that food distribution would favor those with the purple finger so women, showing their great courage once again, went to the polls to provide for their families.

”Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote,” said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad. There has been no official indication that Iraqis who did not vote would not receive their monthly food rations. Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies. Their experiences on the day of polling have underscored many of their concerns about questionable methods used by the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government to increase voter turnout. http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000192.php

Certainly we know that Iraqi women are courageous, surviving as they have under such cruel dick-tatorships of Saddam and lately the invasion and occupation of their country by “The Coalition” of Bush.

Despite what we are told by the Bush media, Iraqi women had more freedom under Saddam than they have under the Bush occupation. Many are well educated and can be relied on to struggle hard to find their rightful places in the forming government.

Why is this post-election picture of happy Iraqi’s dancing for democracy so familiar? For one thing, because it reminds us of the happy Iraqi dancing following the Bush invasion as the Saddam statue was torn down.

That turned out to be a fake perpetrated by our military. Are the glowing stories concerning this recent Iraqi election similarly staged? The only realistic reports we get are from those reporters who leave the highly protected “Green Zone”.

Remembering the plethora of lies told by the Bushies in the first term, can we really trust anything they tell us now?

Meanwhile the little dick-tator struts his “victory”, enabled by a vast TV industry covering the S.O.U speech. Any “victory” that comes out of this election should be awarded to the truly brave women of Iraq who dared to go into the clearing.

“One great day cannot erase a year and a half of blunders.” -- Fareed Zakariaon on The Daily Show.

gapperserve@peoplepc.com

2005-006

Copyright 2005 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: gapperserve@peoplepc.com.