Town of Braintree

Expatriate Iraqis in America

Expatriate Iraqis in America go to great lengths to vote
Affan Alwan came simply because he could, because there was no longer a dictator who would not allow it.

Thirty years after fleeing his homeland, Alwan cast his first-ever vote in an Iraqi election, placed his ballot in a box and smiled for the camera.

''Saddam Hussein was a butcher, he was a dictator, he was a criminal,'' said Alwan, 75, who lives in Virginia. ''It was hell during his regime, but God smiles on us now.''

Alwan was among an estimated 25,000 expatriate Iraqis in America who traveled to unlikely sites - including a Ramada Inn in suburban Maryland, a former home-improvement store in Southgate, Mich., and a converted nightclub on a military base in Irvine, Calif. - to vote in Iraq's first democratic election in 50 years.

Iraqis also voted near Nashville, Tenn., and Chicago, Ill.
Their choices for the country's 275-member national assembly will be added to votes from expatriates in 14 other countries as well as millions in Iraq.

The Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program said roughly 85 percent of the 280,303 Iraqis registered worldwide turned out to vote.
In the United States, of 240,000 eligible Iraqis, fewer than expected registered to vote in five sites across the country. In Michigan, which has the largest Muslim population outside the Middle East, roughly 9,700 of an estimated 95,000 eligible Iraqis registered. In Maryland, 2,048 of 22,000 eligible registered.

By Alwan cast his first-ever vote

Elections

You do realize if you go back to
Iraq in ten years you'll find they
elected a guy who makes Ayatolla
Kohmeni look like a moderate.

Bush has stuck us with a war in
Iraq that he can't win. He has
no clue where to even start.



By MNB

Congratulations you've invented

a time machine!
How else could you see into the future of IRAQ? The war will be won by the IRAQIS people and they have already shown by their participation in this election their courage and determination!

Ten years from now IRAQ may indeed be back under the grip of a tyrant and enslaved but
they have tasted freedom of choice and I for one believe the memory of the free votewill not die!
Humans by their very nature were made to be free, free to choose, free to love and
free make their own way in this world!

All that America could do was to give them a chance to be free, the rest is up to them
,we can?’t guide their lives like children, they would eventually hate us if we did that!

So like an emerging adult we let them go their own way, always concerned with their
progress offering help if asked, it?’s the American way!

By Offering Help the American Way