For some strange reason, the US Government is not applying the same standards to Afghanistan that it did to the neighbouring Iran
"...Despite the increasing evidence of systematic and massive vote fraud, the Obama administration and the American media are still seeking to sustain the pretense that Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election was a basically democratic affair.
The Electoral Complaints Commission, a United Nations-backed oversight group, said that it had received more than 800 charges of irregularities, with 50 of them so serious that they could potentially alter the result of the vote.
A half dozen candidates who opposed incumbent president Hamid Karzai, including his leading challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have charged the government with falsifying the vote. Abdullah’s campaign released video footage Tuesday showing Karzai campaign supporters and election officials marking blank ballots for Karzai and threatening voters at the polls. Another candidate, Mirwais Yasini, produced bags full of ballots he said were cast for him in Kandahar but dumped by election officials and recovered by his campaign.
In the two southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, the site of some of the bloodiest fighting between the US-NATO occupation force and Afghan guerrillas, foreign election observers estimated turnout to be only 5 to 10 percent. The Karzai regime claimed a 40 percent turnout, giving ample margin for systematic ballot-stuffing.
While the American press reported the charges of fraud and the indications of low turnout, the official US position remains one of endorsing the election as an expression of the popular will and a victory, albeit limited, for “democracy” over “terrorism”—i.e., the Taliban-linked insurgents.
President Obama hailed the election in a statement issued August 21, declaring, “This was an important step forward in the Afghan people’s effort to take control of their future...”
Top US officials on the spot, including Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, General Stanley McChrystal, the top military commander, and Richard Holbrooke, chief US envoy to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, all chimed in with endorsements of the basic legitimacy of the vote, suggesting the widespread reports of irregularities were merely the growing pains of democracy.
No such forgiving approach was taken to the election in Iran two months before. The American media denounced the presidential vote in Iran as fraudulent almost as soon as the polls closed June 12. Both the Obama administration and the European powers called into question the legitimacy of the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/pers-a28.shtml
Comrade Stalin
