BARWANA, IRAQ: The polls have been open for six hours in the town of Barwana, one of the three Triad cities which include Haqlaniyah and Haditha. The poll site sits right beneath the now-destroyed Barwana bridge, where Zarqawi terrorists routinely executed residents for not conforming to their perverse interpretation of Islam.
Purple Fingers for All!.
It is estimated Barwana has upward of 40,000 residents. Turnout has been heavy; over 2,000 Iraqis have entered the polls by noon Iraqi time. During the referendum on the Constitution in October, about 2,300 total votes were cast in the city.
Barwana’s Voters Waiting in Line.
By mid-morning, the long and slow moving lines led to some problems with the crowd. At one point there was pushing and shoving between groups of voters, the poll works and Iraqi troops in the courtyard outside the polling station. An Iraqi soldier fired a few rounds in the air to get the crowd’s attention, and the problems quickly subsided after that. A few voters at the scene of the incident left, but the majority of those inside and the rest of the Iraqis queued outside remained in line. Some problems inside the voting center were resolved quickly by the poll workers, and the voting pace increased.
Captain Shannon Neller, Company Commander of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, ordered water, which belonged to the U.S. and Iraqi troops, to be handed out to the Iraqis waiting in the long lines. We handed out the bottles to the smiling crowd and much good will was reestablished.
Turnout is said to be high across the river in the sister city of Haqlaniyah. No reports are available from Haditha at this time.
Barwana, once part of Zarqawi self declared “Islamic Republic of Iraq” , is now the scene of al Qaeda’s greatest nightmare: Muslims exercising their constitutional right to chose their destiny.
