Iraqi Elections

[mburbank]

There will be an election, if you can call one sided voting taking place in two thrids of the country with no way of monitoring and no way of verifying the count an election. There will be a result which we will, at least initially nto only back, but applaud. The violence, in my estimation will then turn from an 'insurgency' to a 'civil war'. It won't have to change in any way to do that, it will be a fact as soon as it's a war against a government, legitimate or not, instead of against an occupying force.

I'm curious to see what we do if whoever wins asks us to leave, either immediately or on a timetable. I don't thik that will happen, because I'm guessing we're going to be pretty heavily involved in collecting the votes and providing 'security' for the count.

My prediction? We'll get Ilawi entrenched. That should give us a good ten years before he fulfills the path most strongmen who we've given power to and he turns on us and we have to pretend we had nothing to do with his rise to power and invade the country. But this will at least free us up to invade Iran. Maybe by the tikme we need to overthrow Iraq again, we can have our installed striong man in Iran still only halfway to becoming our enemy.