BAGHDAD–Well, elec­tion day has come and gone and, by most accounts, was more suc­cess­ful than many peo­ple thought it would be. The Iraqis should be proud of them­selves. The most touch­ing aspect of it was that they brought their chil­dren with them. I haven’t seen Iraqis tak­ing their chil­dren out in months, and now they bring them to the most dan­ger­ous places in the coun­try, on the most dan­ger­ous day of the year. That’s com­mit­ment and that’s brav­ery. I was pro­foundly hum­bled by the faith the vot­ing Iraqis showed.

But bear in mind it was just one day. The hard part is still ahead of this coun­try, and Jan. 30 marked not only the clos­ing of one chap­ter, but the open­ing of another. It is still being writ­ten. To tamp down this insur­gency, the coun­try was placed on total lock­down for three days. And the insur­gents still man­aged to cause may­hem, if not at the scale they promised. If that’s what it takes to secure this coun­try, there’s still a big, big chal­lenge ahead.

The insur­gency is not over. The Sun­nis and middle-class for­mer Ba’athists are still resent­ful and sus­pi­cious. An old friend of mine who was a Ba’athist, but mainly so he could get a job, is bit­ter and morose, feel­ing that now there are two occu­pa­tions. “One from the Amer­i­cans and one from the Ira­ni­ans,” he said. The Sun­nis are ter­ri­fied of their old enemy, and List 169, the Sistani-blessed list, does have a num­ber of peo­ple on it with seri­ous ties to Iran. The coun­try is still a mess, with dete­ri­o­rat­ing ser­vices like water and elec­tric­ity. This is not to say they can’t be over­come, but this is not a time to declare victory.

Be sure and men­tion all this to the war-boosters, who are, dork­ily, coat­ing their fin­gers with blue ink as a sign of sol­i­dar­ity “with the Iraqi peo­ple.” Hm. I don’t remem­ber them doing that for Afghanistan… Why don’t they just ‘fess up and say they’re giv­ing the fin­ger to us doubters? This is not sol­i­dar­ity; it’s a taunt along the lines of, “We were right, nyah nyah!” instead of a cel­e­bra­tion of democ­racy. Make no mis­take: Sun­day was not a val­i­da­tion of Bush’s poli­cies. Most Arab states would like to have democ­racy, yes, but not at the bar­rel of a gun, which is how it came here. If the choice is being invaded, occu­pied and force-fed con­tro­ver­sial elec­tions that might lead to civil war ver­sus work­ing at demo­c­ra­tic reforms at their own pace and in their own way, I sus­pect most Arabs would choose the lat­ter. And who could blame them? Iraq is not an exam­ple to emulate.

As for me, I’m going back to the States for a well-deserved long hol­i­day, return­ing here in March when the pol­i­tics of this place will be well in play. Should be quite inter­est­ing. I only hope Amer­i­can edi­tors and the audi­ences still want to hear about Iraq if the sto­ries are a lit­tle more Iraq-centric and less focused on Amer­i­can sol­diers and poli­cies. Iraq to Amer­ica: It’s not all about the U.S. troops.

Sun­day was the end of the begin­ning. Now, the next step of the jour­ney to what­ever future Iraq has in store for itself starts. We should all wish the Iraqi peo­ple well; they were incred­i­bly brave on Sun­day. But we should real­ize that one elec­tion does not a suc­cess make, and on the path for­ward, there be dragons.

BAGHDAD — Tomor­row Iraqis will go to the polls and, inshal­lah, get a bet­ter gov­ern­ment that they have right now… Even­tu­ally. But first they will have to vote, and that’s an activ­ity fraught with peril.

The secu­rity sit­u­a­tion is unreal. No cars tomor­row — except those with spe­cial passes, which includes media, cops, polit­i­cal guys, etc. in short, if you’re an insur­gent and you hit a car tomor­row, you’re bound to get some­one vaguely impor­tant. Only five polling sta­tions in Bagh­dad will allow cam­eras or other elec­tronic gear, so bear that in mind when you look at pho­tographs of the election.

I’ll be out in the thick of it for a while at least… Out with my pho­tog­ra­pher and see­ing what goes on. Not sure if I’ll be dri­ving or walk­ing. That will depend on my secu­rity guys. This is a free elec­tion? Insur­gent pam­phlets are being dis­trib­uted that any­one walk­ing to a polling cen­ter is a tar­get. Sev­eral cen­ters have already been blown up. The fear is thick enough to cut with a knife. The Iraqi secu­rity forces — with their Amer­i­can patrons — have tanks at the end of my street. Old Soviet T-55s, but tanks, nonetheless.

No one knows what’s going to hap­pen, whether it’s the level of vio­lence, the level of turnout or who will win. The Sistani-blessed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list is expected to do well, but I would be shocked if it got an absolute major­ity. My pre­dic­tions for the elections:

The UIA list will get 30 – 35 per­cent, with the Kur­dish list and Allawi’s list bat­tling for sec­ond place. Allawi is polling much more strongly than I expected; his tough guy image plays well here and many, many Shi’a are sus­pi­cious of the UIA list, which is dom­i­nated by Shi’ites who spent time in Iran. Thou­sands of Shi’ites died to keep Iran from break­ing through the Fao Penin­sula in the 1980 – 88 Gulf War, and they’re not anx­ious to see the Supreme Coun­cil for the Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion — widely seen as an Iran­ian cat’s-paw — come to power. Not too long ago, the Iraqi Interim Defense Min­is­ter, Hazim al-Shalaan, called the UIA list an “Iran­ian list.“

But, not sur­pris­ingly, Haadhi Al-Ahmeri, head of Badr Corps, more or less the mil­i­tary wing of SCIRI, took great umbrage with this. When I asked him about this, he drew him­self up and scowled, say­ing Badr would not dig­nify the Defense Minister’s remarks with a reply. Then he went on to do just that.

“His state­ment was no dif­fer­ent from state­ments from the for­mer regime,” he said. “And as a result of that war, Iraq and Iran lost 100,000 men. The other result was to destroy the economies of Iraq and Iran. And after all of that Sad­dam admit­ted he was wrong.“

He paused and then said, “Does he, Sha­laan, want another war with Iran? If he’s accus­ing Badr and SCIRI because they were in Iran, then where was he? If we’re agents of Iran, then he’s an agent of the coun­try he lived in. Is Hazim Sha­laan more pop­u­lar in Iraq than Abdul Aziz Hakim and SCIRI? It’s a silly state­ment and it proves that he’s intel­lec­tu­ally bank­rupt. We don’t deny that we used to live in Iran. We would like to thank the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment for their hos­pi­tal­ity. And we would like to thank the Iran­ian peo­ple for their hospitality.“

(Not exactly a denial of Iran­ian influ­ence now, is it?)

He went on to say that many Badr and SCIRI mem­bers were “mar­tyrs” in the fight against Saddam’s regime and that the groups took pride in that. Then he said SCIRI and Badr were more pop­u­lar with the Iraqi peo­ple. And finally, Sha­laan is a liar when he says the Badr and other Shi’ite groups are behind the waves of assas­si­na­tions in Iraq.

“Hazim Sha­laan is telling lies to the Iraqi peo­ple,” he said. “Every­one knows that all the ter­ror­ism is done by the for­mer mukhabarat peo­ple.” (Not entirely inac­cu­rate — CA) They are more dan­ger­ous than Zar­qawi, he said. “I’m not say­ing there are no for­eign fight­ers,” he said, “but the finan­cial sup­port, train­ing and sup-plies, logis­ti­cal sup­port — all of these things are from Ba’athists, from the mukhabarat.“

Who wins?

The UIA will get a plu­ral­ity. Then Allawi or the Kud­ish list will be in sec­ond place with about 20 per­cent each. That leaves about 25 per­cent of parliament’s seats to be split among elder states­man Adnan Pachachi’s and pres­i­dent Ghazi Al-Yawer’s lists, as well as a num­ber of minor lists includ­ing a Moq­tada al-Sadr list and var­i­ous tribal lists.

How this is going to work is the per­cent­age of the vote a sin­gle list gets deter­mines the per­cent­age of seats in Par­lia­ment. If the UIA gets 30 per­cent of the vote, the top 82 slots of their list goes to Par­lia­ment. After the seats are allo­cated, the Par­lia­ment must choose a pres­i­dency coun­cil, with a 2/3 vote. The new coun­cil then selects a Prime Min­is­ter, who is approved by a sim­ple major­ity vote in the chamber.

I’m going to go out on a limb here: I think Allawi will keep his job. The UIA list is a hodge­podge of Shi’a par­ties, both sec­u­lar and reli­gious. It’s a coali­tion for get­ting elected, but not for gov­ern­ing. Allawi’s list is more uni­fied, with his Iraqi National Alliance party at the core. (Ahmed Cha­l­abi and his Shi’a Polit­i­cal Coun­cil — the new ver­sion of the Iraqi National Con­gress — is on Sistani’s list.) I think once in Par­lia­ment, the UIA coali­tion will break, allow­ing Allawi to form a work­ing coali­tion with the Kurds, al-Yawer and sec­u­lar Shi’a par­ties from the UIA. This will give him the 2/3 votes he needs to form the pres­i­dency coun­cil, which will then go on to choose him as Prime Minister.

He could also end up being the com­pro­mise PM, when Dawa and SCIRI can’t agree. Allawi — a Shi’ite, sec­u­lar but with no real ties to Iran — could be per­ceived as the least bad option. And fly­ers for the UIA list have been spot­ted that say, “if you like Allawi as Prime Min­is­ter, you can still vote for us.“

That’s not to say mem­bers of the UIA aren’t work­ing to oust the old guy. Hus­sein Sharhis­tani, the for­mer nuclear sci­en­tist and a seri­ous con­tender for the Iraq’s prime min­is­ter slot if it’s not Allawi, was cer­tainly robust in his crit­i­cism of the Prime minister.

“Iraqis were hop­ing that a gov­ern­ment with author­ity to act and sup­ported by the MNF would be able to improve the ser­vices for the peo­ple. But all the ser­vices have dete­ri­o­rated mea­sur­ably in the last eight months.

“He said his pri­or­ity was secu­rity, and yet we see the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion has dete­ri­o­rated,” he said. “He has spent more time improv­ing his own party membership.“

As for his own plans were he to find him­self in Allawi’s seat, Sharhis­tani point­edly noted that he had been the first pick for Prime Min­is­ter job back in June 2003, but that he declined because he pre­ferred to be elected rather than appointed. Like all good politi­cians, he expresses great reluc­tance for the power most ple­beians would grasp after. And he con­tin­ues to express his reluc­tance even as his eyes twin­kle when­ever the phrase “Prime Min­is­ter Sharhis­tani” is mentioned.

In the mid­dle of all of this is the “cam­paign,” such as it is. Sharhis­tani said there was no cur­rent horse-trading between lists, but that some mem­bers of the Iraqi List — Iyad Allawi’s list — had mis­used their gov­ern­ment posi­tions to block legal cam­paign­ing by the UIA. He said he’s seen Iraqi police and National Guards­men putting up posters of Allawi when they should have been work­ing or, worse, intim­i­dat­ing UIA cam­paign work­ers and harass­ing them when they try to do the same. He added that such com­plaints were not wide­spread, however.

“Given that this is the first free elec­tion in Iraq’s his­tory, one should expect some harsh words here and there,” he said archly. Then he pro­ceeded to dish out some harsh words of his own, com­plain­ing that Allawi’s gov­ern­ment was hand­ing out “gifts” of cash to civil ser­vants, stu­dents, teach­ers and others.

“The Iraqi peo­ple deserve a bet­ter democ­racy,” he said. “The exiles have lived in demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries and they know how they’re sup­posed to act.“

Then he whip­sawed back to the gen­er­ous mood of a man who thinks he will soon hold some power in his hands. Despite Allawi’s low-rent Boss Tweed-style pol­i­tick­ing, it’s extra­or­di­nary that in the Arab world it’s being done at all. And also, it may not be enough! “It’s enough that the gov­ern­ing party is not going to be in the major­ity, but may not even be in sec­ond place.“

He pre­dicts his own list to receive 40 to 50 per­cent of the vote.

“Why was it set up like this?” asks Hus­sein al-Mousawi, sec­re­tary of the Shi’a Polit­i­cal Coun­cil. “I don’t know why, but I know it was a mis­take and it was a big mis­take. And it’s going to let the Islamists have a majority.“

(He con­sid­ers Sharhis­tani an Islamist, even though they’re both on the UIA list.)

Then al-Mousawi shifted to talk­ing about where groups such as SCIRI are get­ting their sup­port. In a word, Iran. Iran has long been sus­pected of sup­port­ing SCIRI and Dawa because of those groups’ Shi’a roots and long years in exile in Tehran. Appoint­ing senior mem­bers like Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI, and Jafari to strong posi­tions of author­ity in the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil, and then in the interim gov­ern­ment was a big mis­take, al-Mousawi said, allow­ing these par­ties to use the levers of power to build their base of sup-port and reward their followers.

“Why has Amer­i­can been so stu­pid?” he asked. “It’s been the wrong struc­ture from the begin­ning. It started with the Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil and just got worse from there. Why didn’t they sup­port Cha­l­abi? They should have sup­ported demo­c­ra­tic and lib­eral parties.“

Cha­l­abi founded the SPC after his own Iraqi National Con­gress ran afoul of his ene­mies in the U.S. State Depart­ment and CIA, caus­ing him to fall out of favor with the Amer­i­cans. The sus­pi­cions of spy­ing for Iran, lying about weapons of mass destruc­tion and fis­cal chi­canery didn’t help either.

Amer­i­cans are “fool­ish,” al-Mousawi said. “And they don’t under­stand what hap­pens in Iraq.“

It is this atti­tude among the Cha­l­abists and oth­ers on the UIA list that lead me to pre­dict a split that will favor Allawi, who is anx­ious to win the elec­tion because he’s keenly con­scious of his appointee-status and thinks that if he gets the vot­ers’ nod, he will have the legit­i­macy to crack down on an insur­gency that so far has resisted most efforts to con­tain it.

Democ­racy in Iraq is a “generations-long” effort, a U.S. offi­cial in Bagh­dad said, and the elec­tion is just the first step. “But it’s an event that needs to hap­pen if you’re going to take the steps to see that democ­racy. You have to have these hopes. You need to believe you can get it done.“

The Sunni non-Vote

I have a bet with a Major in the Amer­i­can Spe­cial Forces here. He thinks Sunni turnout will be more than 50 per­cent; I don’t. He gets a free sub­scrip­tion to TIME if he wins. The stakes of the bet are low — for us — but for the Iraqis, they’re very high. If the Sun­nis don’t turn out, the Par­lia­ment will be heav­ily weighted toward the Shi’ites and the Kurds. The Sun­nis, already feel­ing the the tum­bling feel­ing of falling from the seat of power they’ve occu­pied for cen­turies, will have less of a rea­son to back down and work at end­ing the insur­gency, which is still a Sunni-dominated phenomenon.

“Peo­ple in Mosul, Ramadi, Samarra want to par­tic­i­pate, but they are scared,” said Dr. Sa’ad Abdul al-Razzak, a mem­ber of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee for the Iraqi Inde­pen­dent Democ­rats, Pachachi’s group. No one will vote in Mosul, he said, because they are really scared. Secu­rity is the main thing, he said. “For this rea­son or another, they will not participate.“

He sus­pects few Sun­nis would vote, and anec­do­tal evi­dence indi­cates that he will be proved cor­rect. I’ve yet to meet a Sunni who plans to vote or has faith in the process. The con­cern among many is is that if the Sun­nis don’t par­tic­i­pate, the elec­tions will be seen as ille­git­i­mate. “Many peo­ple from Arab coun­tries will say this is not a cor­rect elec­tion,” said al-Razzak.

Still, he doesn’t “nec­es­sar­ily” think there will be a full-scale civil war.

The U.S.‘s insis­tence on the timetable mys­ti­fies al-Razzak. He said it grew out of the Nov. 15, 2003 agree­ment between Paul Bre­mer and the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil. He wanted mid-2005 for the elec­tion, but the IGC — which was heav­ily influ­enced by Kurds and Shi’ites, who have been push­ing for the elec­tion the most — pressed for early elections.

“I know it is very impor­tant for Mr. Bush,” said al-Razzak. The Amer­i­cans, he said, have only the rel­a­tively smooth expe­ri­ence of Afghanistan, which is very dif­fer­ent from Iraq, he said. “They think they can do the same here. But this is our prob­lem here. It’s impor­tant to restore secu­rity first.” He expects only 5 per­cent to 10 per­cent of the peo­ple to vote in the cities of Mosul, Tikrit, Fal­lu­jah, Baqoubah, parts of Bagh­dad and the provinces of Diyala.

What hap­pens next?

Well, the con­sti­tu­tion is next on the agenda, then end­ing the occu­pa­tion. Par­lia­ment will con­vene a com­mit­tee to draft the con­sti­tu­tion which will be voted on in Octo­ber. But what will it look like? Islamic? Sec­u­lar? Some­thing in between? And who will nego­ti­ate a with­drawal of Amer­i­can forces? What will the out­lines of the Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing look like?

First of all, don’t expect a timetable from the UIA lead­ers. Even though they said a timetable was a cen­tral part of their plat­form when they intro­duced the list in Decem­ber, high-ranking mem­bers of the list have now backed off that demand, con­di­tion­ing it instead on the effi­cacy of Iraqi secu­rity forces.

“There is no one around the world who would accept occu­pa­tion,” said Badr’s Al-Ahmeri. “But in Iraq, we live in unusual cir­cum­stances. If they [the Amer­i­cans] leave, a lot of seri­ous prob­lems will appear.“

After secu­rity is estab­lished, then the Amer­i­cans will be asked to leave. “We should have secu­rity ser­vices to pro­tect law and order,” he said. “Then, maybe, at the end of 2005, we can start a dia­logue to set up a sched­ule.” Not exactly the full-throated “Yan­kee Go Home!” most of his sup­port­ers are ask­ing for, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple opin­ion polls.

And then, there’s the inclu­sion of Sun­nis in the constitution-writing process. There’s no stip­u­la­tion that mem­bers of the Con­sti­tu­tional Com­mit­tee must be elected, so there’s a win­dow of oppor­tu­nity to bring in Sunni lead­ers, tribal lead­ers and any num­ber of rep­re­sen­ta­tives who haven’t par­tic­i­pated in this elec­tion. This is the one sliver of hope. If the U.S. can convince/encourage/threaten the antic­i­pated Shi’a-Kurdish lead­er­ship to reach out out to Sun­nis, Iraq’s new gov­ern­ment might — might! — not be a com­plete dis­as­ter that col­lapses into civil war.

“The hope is, even they choose not to par­tic­i­pate in this elec­tion, they will have other chances,” said the U.S. offi­cial. “It only gets really des­per­ate if the con­sti­tu­tion falls apart. And if it comes to that, we’ll have to start from zero. And that will make all this look like a walk in the park.“

Speak­ing like a man who’s already in office, Sa’ad Jawad, head of SCIRI’s polit­i­cal depart­ment, attempted to reas­sure me that there would be no Shi’a-Sunni ret­ri­bu­tion when the Shi’ites got their hands on the levers of power. “Even if we get 70 per­cent of the seats, we will not exer­cise our right uni­lat­er­ally to decide who the next gov­ern­ment will be,” he said, with an air of aggrieved gen­eros­ity. This is not going to be a Shi’a gov­ern­ment or a Sunni gov­ern­ment or a Kur­dish gov­ern­ment or Arab gov­ern­ment or whatever.“

What will the con­sti­tu­tion look like?

This is a good ques­tion. There are ele­ments in the com­ing gov­ern­ment — cough, cough, I’m look­ing at you, Sharhis­tani and Al-Ahmeri — who say they don’t want a mullah-run sys­tem like Iran, but that any con­sti­tu­tion must respect the Islamic val­ues and iden­tity of Iraq. Sharhis­tani said the Iraqi peo­ple will not accept any law that goes against their Islamic prin­ci­ples. He also dis­missed the Tran­si­tional Admin­is­tra­tion Law (TAL) as a start­ing point, say­ing that although there were many good things in TAL, there were sev­eral points that were unac­cept­able. He referred to the “three province veto” clause that allows the rejec­tion of the per­ma­nent con­sti­tu­tion if 2/3^rd of the elec­torate of three provinces vote it down. He also cau­tioned that requir­ing the pres­i­dency coun­cil to unan­i­mously approve of all laws, allowed any sin­gler per­son veto power over legislation.

But the basic point is that the TAL was imposed by the Amer­i­cans. “The TAL was passed by an unelected group,” he said. “It was the best that could be done under the circumstances.“

Al-Ahmeri goes a bit fur­ther. If he equiv­o­cates on the urgency to end the occu­pa­tion, he’s spir­ited in his insis­tence that the con­sti­tu­tion will be Islamic. What exactly that means, how­ever, is unclear. In short, don’t expect the TAL to be the base­line for the new national charter.

“The TAL is not a con­sti­tu­tion,” he said. “It was just an agree­ment to run the cur­rent set-up.“

To suc­ceed the TAL, he said, “we would like to make a con­sti­tu­tion to include all facts of life.” He said that the new con­sti­tu­tion would be Islamic. “There was agree­ment in Lon­don, Sula­hadin and in the TAL that Islam should be the offi­cial reli­gion and one of the main sources” of legislation.

“We should not make any laws that would be against Islamic shari’a,” he said. But, he added, “We don’t want an Islamic gov­ern­ment.” (Huh? — CA)

And while he denies any plans for a theo­cratic regime along the lines of what’s in Tehran, he argues, “Islam con­tains the real, prac­ti­cal mean-ing that your coun­try and coun­tries in the West have.” The prin­ci­ples of Islam will be fol­lowed, he says, point­ing to how mar­riage and divorce law will be han­dled as an exam­ple. “Of course, we will not write it accord­ing to Amer­i­can tra­di­tion. We will write it to fol­low Islam.” Islam, if you read the Qur’an, “makes women like queens,” he said. And he sees no need to take inspi­ra­tion from else­where. “Islam is a wealthy reli­gion,” he said. “You don’t needs to take from other sources.“

So? What about Sun­day?

Tomor­row is shap­ing up to be a big day. Lots of secu­rity issues, wor­ries about the future and gen­eral anx­i­ety. Will the elec­tions be suc­cess­ful? What would con­sti­tute suc­cess­ful? To be hon­est, I don’t know any­more. A high turnout would def­i­nitely help, but even that may not be enough if the Sunni don’t come to the polls and can’t be enticed into the con­sti­tu­tional process. One thing is cer­tain though: The insur­gency will con­tinue unabated. Our sources in the insur­gency — the Ba’athists and nation­al­ists, not the jihadis — pledge that Sun­day means noth­ing. As long as Iraq is occu­pied by Amer­i­cans and their pup­pets, “brought in on the back of their tanks,” as the say­ing goes, the vio­lence will con­tinue. And since I don’t see the gov­ern­ment chang­ing much, I don’t see much chang­ing in Iraq. The infra­struc­ture will con­tinue to limp along or dete­ri­o­rate fur­ther, Amer­i­cans and Iraqis will con­tinue to die, in large num­bers in the case of the lat­ter. And Iraq will fur­ther dis­in­te­grate into a failed state.

Now, I may be sur­prised by the turns of events here. And Lord knows I’ve been wrong before. But from here in Bagh­dad, peo­ple are vot­ing not because they want democ­racy, but because they’re grasp­ing onto any­thing they think will help. For Iraqis, hope is fleet­ing and life is short. This isn’t opti­mism, it’s des­per­a­tion, and that’s no basis for a democracy.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Pres­i­dent Ghazi al-Yawar, who, just a cou­ple of weeks ago said the date of the elec­tions were firm, now seems to think maybe the date is not set in stone:

Iraq’s pres­i­dent urged the United Nations Tues­day to look into whether the coun­try should go ahead with its sched­uled Jan. 30 elec­tion despite vio­lence threat­en­ing to scare vot­ers away from the polls.

“Def­i­nitely the United Nations, as an inde­pen­dent umbrella of legit­i­macy … should really take the respon­si­bil­ity by see­ing whether that (tim­ing) is pos­si­ble or not,” Ghazi al-Yawar told Reuters in an interview.

Iraq’s interim gov­ern­ment and its Amer­i­can allies have repeat­edly said that the vote would not be delayed. But Yawar said the polls would fail if a rag­ing insur­gency kept a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Sun­nis away from vot­ing stations.

“Def­i­nitely the United Nations, the party who is inde­pen­dent, who can­not be threat­ened or intim­i­dated and who is cred­i­ble in the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, should really stand up for their respon­si­bil­i­ties and oblig­a­tions by say­ing whether that is pos­si­ble or not,” he said.

“On a log­i­cal basis, there are signs that it will be a tough call to hold the election.“

There’s no doubt it will be a tough call. But as I argued pre­vi­ously, based on my report­ing, there’s really no legal way to change the date. But per­haps it’s not as iron-clad as I was led to believe:

Iraq’s tem­po­rary con­sti­tu­tion, endorsed by the United Nations, calls for elec­tions to be held by end-January. The U.N. has said only Iraq’s Inde­pen­dent Elec­toral Com­mis­sion can change the poll sched­ule. The Com­mis­sion says chang­ing the date is a polit­i­cal deci­sion that would require wide consultation.

So maybe I’ll win that $5 bet I made with a col­league that they’ll delay the elec­tions after all. I mean, I’ll admit that while there doesn’t appear to be any legal way to post­pone the elec­tion, peo­ple may even­tu­ally bow to real­ity and just not hold them. I’m sure the Iraqi Bar Asso­ci­a­tion would even­tu­ally recover. And the U.N. is used to being snubbed by now, I guess.

Oh, hell. I’m just giv­ing into despair. From my per­spec­tive on the ground, it seems like a really fool­hardy idea to hold an elec­tion when high-level offi­cials are being assas­si­nated, mul­ti­ple car bombs are going of every day and U.S. troops — to say noth­ing of Iraqi civil­ians — are dying all the time. But hey, guys in the south say things are cool! And Sadr City has garbage pickup now.

Admit­tedly, the south is a lot bet­ter off than the cen­ter and west of the coun­try and garbage pickup is progress, but such forced silver-lining spot­ting seems bit like bail­ing sea water with a thim­ble while you’re on the Titanic.

On another note, embed starts tomor­row, not today. And there’s a rumor that Abu Masoub al-Zarqawi has been nabbed. It’s from ITAR-TASS, how­ever, so take it with a big grain of salt. Right now, Amer­i­can mil­i­tary spokes­peo­ple I con­tacted are nei­ther con­firm­ing nor deny­ing it — which prob­a­bly means some­one big was cap­tured around Baqoubah, but they’re work­ing to con­firm the iden­tity. Might be al-Zarqawi, might be some­one high up in his orga­ni­za­tion. It’s too soon to tell and I’ve not heard back from my sources on the ground there.

(I know this talk of “sources” is frus­trat­ing. It is for me, too. But I don’t want to betray someone’s safety, and I can’t go out to these places myself. So I have to report by remote con­trol many times. It’s far, far from the ideal, but Iraq has become the land of what’s nec­es­sary and what’s possible.)

[UPDATE 7:12:17 PM +0300 GMT: I’m hear­ing from the Embassy that they think they may have some­one who looks like him, but it’s not al-Zarqawi.]

[UPDATE 8:03:37 PM +0300 GMT: The spokesman for Task Force 1 – 6, oper­at­ing around Baqoubah, says, “We dont have him, and not sure where these rumors start.”]