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Baghdad Embassy Iraqi-Americans Show their Voter's Finger!
January 30, 2005 was the second round of Iraqi elections, and many Iraqi Americans who worked in the Embassy were eligible to vote, and did. When voting, Iraqi's were required to press their finger into some ink that was very hard to remove. This was how they could detect if someone had voted, and could prevent voting more than once. This scene occured in the Baghdad Embassy dining room. CPI advisor Elizabeth Warner started to take pictures of some of the voters, and more ran over from dining tables to get into the picture and show their ink stained "voter's" finger. Then, the 2004/2005 US Ambassador John Negroponte ( in 2008, he is now the Deputy Secretary of State, reporting to Condi Rice) jumped up from his table and joined in (he was not eligible to vote). Even though there was some violence against Iraqi voters in some precincts, they ignored the problem and many stood in long lines to vote because they were so proud to be allowed to vote in free elections.
