Hersh is alleging U.S. supported ballot-stuffing in Iraq

That's what he just said, very explicitly, on WNYC's  Brian Leherer show.  As I've mentioned before,  I think Hersh has a habit of shooting-from-the-hip when freed from the reins of NYer fact-checkers.  In any case, worth knowing he's charging that. (Here's Hersh's full NYer piece on what he says were U.S.'s efforts to fiddle with the Iraqi elections.)

The administration has acknowleged that they considered supporting one party or candidate  over another. But look at the White House's denial that they ever went through with it:

Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that "in the final analysis, the president determined and the United States government adopted a policy that we would not try - and did not try - to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office."

As the NYT notices, this smells of confirmation-via-denial:

The statement appeared to leave open the question of whether any covert help was provided to parties favored by Washington, an issue about which the White House declined to elaborate.

Hersh says it was Iyad Allawi's party that got the helping hand. Apparently, the hope wasn't that he would 'win' but that he would get enough votes to block Shiites from winning a super-majority (which indeed, the Shiites didn't get).

The fiddling--even contemplating it-- strikes me as tragically dumb. The cost-benefit ratios were  out of whack. Get 'caught'--even if the plan wasn't ultimately carried out--and you fuel (maybe accurate) swirling conspiracy theories and the already deep distrust of the U.S. As for the potential benefits: The reality is that the Shiite coalition was always going to win. The only question is whether they would have to include more Kurds in their governing coalition.  That's significant but not worth all the bad P.R. the U.S. is about to incur.

Remember, what was being elected was only a caretaker gov't. Its main task was an important one, basically writing a constitution. But there were and are all sorts of pressures pushing for broader representation on that committee. Cconsider the fact that plenty of Sunnis have now been charged with helping to writing the thing, even though Sunnis were  unrepresented in the elections.

And keep in mind, it was always very questionable whether the Shiite coalition could get a super-majority in the first place. That is,  if the U.S. didn't fiddle, we might be in the same place as we are now: with a small but not super Shiite majority.

In other words, the potential tampering was high-risk (i.e. the potential for super bad P.R.) and of questionable benefit. That doesn't strike me as a winning equation.

And even that's assuming the U.S. could effectively tamper--which might not have been the case. I don't know, but I see it as perfectly possible that the U.S., riven by internal disagreement, decided to launch a off-the-books semi-professional effort that was too small and ill-supported  to have a significant effect. That's another scenario in which the shenanigans would have all the cost with none of the benefits. 

Those are details (and speculation).  The larger picture is pretty simple. As disenchanted democracy promoter Larry Diamond told Hersh, "We had to be fair and transparent in everything we did, if we were really interested in promoting democracy—I took it as simply an article of faith.”

Comments

[jim in austin]

"...strikes me as tragically dumb."

That may well be the perfect blanket statement for the entirety of our Excellent Iraqi Adventure...

[Mr. Natural]

Would ANYONE in this administration lie or cheat? I mean ESPECIALLY with an election? C'mon, give me a break!

[Swopa]

No, Jim, this is the perfect blanket statement: "That's another scenario in which the shenanigans would have all the cost with none of the benefits."

I think Eric's right in imagining that the U.S. probably engaged in a minor-league effort that accomplished little besides pissing everyone off ... and, specifically, notifying the new Shiite government that the U.S. wasn't to be trusted.