Security for the Elections

An article in today's NY Times says that there are insufficient forces in Iraq to guard the number of polling places officials have in mind for the upcoming election.

I've never advocated delaying the elections. As difficult as it has been imagined they would be to actually hold, the cost of not doing them, in terms of further undermining the credibility of the American presence and undermining the credibility of the Iraq government, seemed far worse. But I'm beginning to question whether the elections can actually be held at all, or at least to the degree that they'll be regarded as legitimate.

Iraqi and American officials believe it is important to deploy Iraqi forces, rather than have American troops police the polls, to ensure the credibility of the vote. But American commanders say that only 145,000 Iraqi security personnel will be trained and ready by election day, now scheduled for Jan. 30, far short of the 270,000 that Iraqi officials say are needed.

That's almost half of the forces they say they will need to guard the 9000 or so polling places that will open for the election.

At this point, it's hard to say that even with that number of Iraqi security personnel, and American troops waiting in the wings to reinforce them, that they would be able to secure the election. The insurgents are stronge, and bold, and can pick and choose which spots they can attack to cause the most discord, while the Iraqi and American forces have no choice but to try and protect them all. Probably the only thing that could guarantee the safety of voters at each polling place is an overwhelming number of American troops guarding each one, which is impossible.

At this point I think we are faced with a choice of either a dealy that is costly to our credibility, or an election which is so insecure, so violent and so undermines that purpose of the elections that we would have better not to hold them in the first place. It's hard to say which is even the lesser of the two evils.