A Ruse, A Crock Or A Scam?

Final Iraq elections results are in and it looks like our friends at IRAQ THE MODEL not only didn't win a seat in the new government, they didn't even spend the money that their US donors sent them:

Little parties like ours couldn't compete with the larger ones that own radio and TV networks and had their banners and posters filling the streets while I had to borrow from my friends to pay the 5000 $ registration fees of the party because the support we received for the party from our friends and supporters hasn't reached Baghdad till this moment because of some banking bureaucracy. All we had was 3000 $ to spend on advertising and publicity and managing all the party's affairs...

Remember, pro-war US visitors donated over US$10,000 to the Fadhil brothers, plus another US$14,000 for the brothers’ Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party. Not that this seems to be bothering the folks posting comments at Iraq The Model today - nobody is complaining, in fact they are all congratulating the Fadhil brothers on a fine result!

Well, I guess if you are happy that your government trashed international conventions, wasted over 100,000 lives and spent hundreds of billions of dollars to get an election result that confirmed exactly what everybody knew in the first place (majority Shi'ites back Shi'ite rule, Kurds want independence), I guess it all makes sense to you somehow.

If it was my money, I'd be asking for it back. But the regulars at ITM are advising the brothers to prepare a better campaign for the next elections, which they say will be the real elections.

The election you should have your sigts on is the first election for a permenant parliment, or what ever the legislative body of a free and democratic Iraq will be called.

So what was all this fuss about January 30, 2005, for which so many lives and so much money has been sacrificed? Wasn't this supposed to be the big moment? Isn't that why Negroponte is declaring it an Iraqi national holiday?

The Fadhil brothers also reveal (finally) that they were on election list number 7461. Interestingly, none of the regulars have ever asked about this either. My Google search brings up no information on this list - anybody got some links to more info? I'd love to know who these guys were in bed with...

Given that it seems possible that Omar Fadhil leads a double life as a German radio broadcaster, it's fair to ask whether the Iraqi Pro-Democracy even existed as anything more than a money-raising, US propaganda Web site. Anybody got any proof?

UPDATE: An ITM visitor called Wadard claims he checked the site meter shortly after Omar posted and saw the givewaway German domain suffix 'com.de'- he also cites US articles from the SoA tour confirming that German Omar's heavy smoking habit is shared by Baghdad Omar.