Democracy - Bush Afghan Styyyyyle

Whenever Bush talks about the great, budding democracy Afghanistan is developing, why doesn't he discuss these facts?

With the election drawing closer, the high voter registration figures - more than 10 million so far, slightly more than the estimated voting population of about 9.5 million - have been celebrated as a sign of the Afghan people's thirst for democracy. But others say the high registration rate could turn the election into a farce.

"We are just beginning an exercise; people are enthusiastic, they want to have cards," President Hamid Karzai said recently, making light of the whole issue. "In fact, it doesn't bother me if Afghans have two registration cards. If they'd like to vote twice, well welcome, this is an exercise in democracy, let them exercise it twice."

He suggested that there could be anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 cases of double registration. Other election observers said it could be as many as a million.

[snip]

But as the plays touring the villages point out, multiple registration is in danger of undermining the credibility of the election. Many Afghans know of cases of multiple registration and admit that it has dented their confidence in the process.

Ibrahim, an office manager in Kabul, said he became disillusioned early in the registration process when he met an acquaintance who proudly showed him 10 cards that he had obtained for himself.

And why doesn't Bush talk about the presidential candidate which an Afghan court has demanded be removed from the ballot because he supports Afghan women's rights?

Afghanistan’s Supreme Court called for a candidate to be barred from the country’s first democratic presidential election, arguing he had committed blasphemy by speaking out against polygamy, a court official said on Thursday. The court also ordered that Latif Pedram be summoned to explain his comments “that with polygamy social justice will not be possible” and over women’s right of divorce within Islam, said Wahid Moshda, head of the Supreme Court’s publication department.

Why is it that shithead bloggers like myself are fact checking Bush's convention speech but the mainstream media isn't?