Robert Fisk asks us when we stopped caring about civilians deaths in wartime.

McClatchy reports on Iraq's meager voter turnout:

Voter turnout in Iraq's provincial elections Saturday was the lowest in the nation's short history as a new democracy despite a relative calm across the nation. Only about 7.5 million of more than 14 million registered voters went to the polls.

Interviews suggest that the low voter turnout also is an indication of Iraqi disenchantment with a democracy that, so far, has brought them very little.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and the fall of a brutal dictator, Iraqis witnessed unprecedented violence in their nation and what they believe is humiliation under a foreign occupation. Even on Saturday, U.S. tanks could be spotted across Baghdad on largely empty roads. READ MORE

Prof. Cole offers some insight on the election:

There was a lockdown of the whole country, in which US troops assisted, with no private automobiles allowed to run. Given this datum, the breathless newspaper headlines that the elections came off without any major attacks are reporting a given. Guerrillas can't detonate a car bomb if they can't drive a car to their target.

Glitches prevented thousands of voters from casting their ballots McClatchy says, causing big demonstrations and protest rallies to be held. The Iraqi government electoral high commission said that the main problem was that some Iraqis had not registered and then just showed up expecting to be able to vote anyway. There were widespread reports of vote-buying.

American corporate media will report the Iraqi provincial elections as a vindication of the 2003 US invasion of that country, and as a sign that Iraqis are eager to be like Americans. In places like Sadr City, the teeming slums of East Baghdad, many Iraqis voted as a protest against continued US military presence. Likewise, Sunni fundamentalists saw the vote as an assertion of Iraqi sovereignty. The elections come in the wake of the Status of Forces Agreement that pledges all US troops will be out of the country by 2011, and in the wake of the election of Barack Obama in the US, who has committed to having most US troops out in 16 months. The sharp fall in deaths of civilians and security personnel in January, to 189, is not a sign that Bush won but rather that the Iraqis have. No point in blowing things up if the US is leaving anyway, and less reason to resist the new federal Iraqi government if Sunni Arab elites can rule their own provinces.

It is not the US presence in Iraq that Iraqis are celebrating in this election but Washington's imminent departure.

The USG Open Source center translated the sermon Fiday of Muzaffar al-Musawi, Friday prayer leader in Sadr City is observed to carry a report on a Friday sermon Shaykh Muzaffar al-Musawi delivered in the City of Al-Sadr:

' In his sermon, Al-Musawi urges citizens to participate in the elections "intensively so that others will not fill the voting forms." He denounces those whom he termed the "climbers of the ladder of Al Al-Sadr." He says: "We call on the sons of the City of Al-Sadr to vote lest others fill the forms or rig the elections. The one who does not participate in the elections will be betraying Martyr Al-Sadr and Muqtada al-Sadr."

He adds: "Some politicians and parties speak in the name of the two religious authorities, Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and Sayyid Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, may God sanctify their secret. We tell them that we, the sons of the two Al-Sadrs suffered from the torture and evil of Saddam. Beware, do not let anyone to climb the ladder of Al Al-Sadr."

Al-Musawi says: "Our bloc is the Independent Free Men Trend bloc, for which the Al-Sadr Trend announced its support a week ago."

Al-Musawi adds: "We have seen humiliation and deprivation from the authority and the occupier. What the occupier did was more heinous than what Saddam did."

Concluding, Al-Musawi says: "Elect the Independent Free Men Trend list so that your suffering will end. Make them hear your voice tomorrow. Say yes, yes to the Free Men List in order to prove to them that we are still present in the arena, the street, and Iraq."

-mr