Here.

I'm watching this carefully...everyone's juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity.

Politically unsophisticated people confuse elections and raw democracy with freedom and human rights. Wrong. Unless the democratic process is restrained by a basic infrastructure, like a Consitution, it's worthless. There needs to be some overriding structure that says, "this thing is not subject to majority rule." I am worried that the idea of an Iraqi constitution seems to be going by the wayside in favor of getting everyone to the ballot box ASAP.

Elections are a means, not an end. Without a cultural and political base protecting the minorities from the majorities, too often they end up "one man, one vote, one time."

The good news is that Iraqis are a bit more sophisticated than many Arab nations, which might help. The other hope is that if women are not somehow disenfranchised, you have a large portion of the electorate with a lot to gain by not voting in radical Islamics.