Election Day in Iraq

Earning my keep

The news was full of reports of violence to the north, what little we saw of the news today. The weather was beautiful and the computers were down, so we trenched in our fiber optic line to the empty trailers we're moving our offices to. We are happy to be in the sunny south and hoping for the best after the elections. Aljazeera http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage had a strikingly different slant on today's elections compared to CNN. Our contractors haven't worked for a few days, Friday being a holy day (like our Sunday), and their traditional day off. Then there were the travel restrictions and curfews prior to today's elections that shut everything down.

The Iraqi voters literally risked life and limb to go out to the polls today. Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Allawi predicted that voter turnout would be better than in the United States and he was right. CNN reported an impressive 75% nationwide turnout. That might be just a little optimistic, but it looks like they pulled it off, with a little help from their friends.