[Previous entry: "Betcha didn't know"] [Next entry: "HTML O' the Day"]

02/03/2005: "Manifest Destiny?"

"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."

- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S.Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.

We will succeed because the Iraqi people value their own liberty -- as they showed the world last Sunday. Across Iraq, often at great risk, millions of citizens went to the polls and elected 275 men and women to represent them in a new Transitional National Assembly.

"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." POTUS, SOTU, 1/2/05

I think they see it a little differently over there.