Iraq and Afghanistan

Yesterday’s optimism surrounding the election needs to be corrected in several regards.

First, the idea that there were going to be a million Iraqis voting outside the country was apparently wildly off. By today’s figures it appears the election board will be lucky to get 100,000. This changes the picture considerably. Does it mean that overseas Iraqis are uninterested? Does it mean there has been coercion in overseas communities? Does it mean that election organization (for example with only five places to register in the United States) was massively inadequate? I do not know.

Secondly, there seems to be a darker mood in Iraq than I was reporting. An Iraqi government official says that if not enough people vote (apparently he means Sunni Arabs), it is likely to lead to civil war. A U.S. intelligence report sees a great deal of violence after the election. The report also considers the probability of civil war to be substantial. At the same time, reports are that the Shiite parties are posed to demand from the Americans a time table for leaving after the election. Condoleezza Rice and other American officials say that there can be no time table. It depends on how well the Iraqis do in establishing their own security forces. Here, too, there is much dissension. Condi tells the Senate that we now have 120,000 trained Iraqi security forces; Senator Biden says that we are lucky if we have 4000. And so it goes.