He sees two names on the ballot; he knows one of them, Bashar al-Assad, the current president whose family has been in power since 1970. The other one is new, so he decides to give this fellow his support. He votes for "the other guy."
Feeling proud of himself, he goes home to his wife and tells her how he voted for the underdog so the poor man would feel good about himself.
"What?!? Are you crazy?" his wife responds. "They'll throw you in a dungeon cell and let you rot, then they'll come and take our home and everything we have, and kick me and the kids out into the street, if they even let us live! Go back, tell them you made a mistake, apologize, and change your vote to President al-Assad immediately!"
"My goodness, I didn't think of it that way," Mamman says. "I'll go back right away."
So Mamman goes back to town hall, and tells the guards at the voting booth what happened.
"I don't know what I was thinking," he pleads with them. "I guess I just wasn't paying attention. Please, let me change my vote to President al-Assad. That's who I want to lead our great country. Please."
"Relax," the guard tells him. "Go back home to your wife and children, eat some supper, and get some sleep."
"Yes, there is no need to worry," the other guard assures Mamman as he pats him on the back. "We have already fixed your mistake."
Ever wonder how Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad manages to win elections with 99 percent of the vote, just as his father did before him?
Well, it certainly doesn't seem to keep Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich awake at night.
Kucinich recently visited Syria, and met with the despotic al-Assad. The two commiserated on their dislike of President George W. Bush and his nation building efforts in Iraq. They aren't very fond of Bush's attempts to spread democracy to the Middle East, either.
It's not too difficult to imagine just how Kucinich could possibly find the gall to explore some moral equivalence between President Bush and the Syrian dictator and terrorist extraordinaire Bashar al-Assad, especially since he had already made his merry way across the bridge over the River Delusion, with Assad waiting with flowers and bated breath on the other side.
You see, once Kucinich found solidarity with Saddam Hussein's regime, it only makes sense that his next stop would be Syria.
Forget for a moment that Saddam's WMD have been in Syria for years now. There are a list of similarities that make's one wonder whether Kucinich even knows that Assad isn't Hussein.
Consider: Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, turned Syria's supposed non-Monarch led, people-powered state into a socialized, one-man led institution of fear and suppression.
Sound familiar? That's because it's exactly what Saddam Hussein did in Iraq.
The opposition in Iraq, main the Kurds, were slaughtered by the thousands by Saddam's armed forces. But a few years before Saddam carried out the Kurdish massacres, Assad had already massacred the opposition Syrians (like our intrepid voter Mammar al-Aki) by the thousands.
In 1990, Saddam's army invaded neighbor Kuwait and proceeded to impose colonial rule on the nation and imprison anyone they found that they didn't kill first.
Two months later, Assad's military completed its occupation of neighbor Lebanon, imposing colonial rule and killing or imprisoning anyone, even (or especially) government officials, that dared not toe the line.
Then there was the support for terrorists. While everyone knows that Saddam was connected to Abu Nidal, most of us remember former President Bill Clinton explaining to the American people exactly how Saddam was circumventing sanctions by producing chemical weapons in Sudan, where al-Qaeda was doing Saddam's dirty work and being paid with the kind of WMD that, at the time, only Iraq was building.
When Usama bin Laden visited Baghdad, he and Saddam's senior security staff helped coordinate al-Qaeda's foray into the Northern Iraq camps, where they would be given safe haven and weapons in return for doing some more of Saddam's dirty work, namely killing Kurds.
Soon after that, al-Qaeda and Saddam's Iraqi regime would cement their reputation as the two largest threats to global security and the United States.
Syria, under both Assads, would sponsor PLO and Hezbollah attacks on Israeli citizens. They helped trigger last year's Second Lebanon War, and actively participated by transporting rockets and other weapons in ambulances from Syria to Hezbollah launching pads in civilian Lebanese territory.
Currently, Syria is partnering with Iran to sponsor terror attacks against Americans and Iraqis in Iraq, Israelis in Israel, and Assad continues to arm terrorist cells that have been planning attacks in an attempt to derail the upcoming peace summit between Arab, Israeli, and American leaders.
And oh, by the way, Saddam had a habit of winning those nail-biting, 99-percent re-election victories.
Regardless, Kucinich said in an interview after his meeting with Assad:
"President Assad showed a real desire to play a role in helping to create a peaceful settlement of the conditions in Iraq, as well as a grander approach towards creating peace. So it was a very important meeting, and I felt honored to have the chance to speak with him."
Kucinich then said that Assad's willingness to take in Iraqi refugees (I guess Kucinich never asked him about Palestinian refugees or the Jews that were forcibly removed from their homes in Syria in 1948 and became Israeli refugees):
"[S]hows that here is a man, President Assad, who should be respected and appreciated for the role that he has played. And so it is important for the United States to take that gesture as a sign, a very powerful demonstration, of the willingness to try to achieve peace. And I think we need to move forward with that understanding."
But I'm sure Kucinich would agree that since the war in Iraq removed a dictator that used WMD on his own people, tortured thousands, and murdered thousands more, at least we accomplished something that benefited the world... right?
Here's another Kucinich gem from that interview:
"In the Christian Bible, there is a phrase that says: 'That which is crooked cannot be made straight.' The effort against Iraq was dishonest, or crooked, from the beginning, and nothing good can come of it, except: The international community is needed to become involved to put together a peace-keeping and security force that can move in as the U.S. determines that it must end the occupation..."
So, the U.S., with the help of Syrian peace-keepers, must end the occupation of Iraq which, according to Kucinich, accomplished nothing constructive, despite deposing one of the most murderous dictators in history.
There are people this bonkers in the world. Most of them, however, are not running for president.
