The Referendum...

"So the referendum is tomorrow- well, technically speaking, today.

We’ve been having more than the usual power outages. Government officials were saying ‘power problems’, ‘overload’, etc. for the last two days and then suddenly changed their minds today and claimed it was ‘sabotage’. It’s difficult to tell. All we know is that large parts of Baghdad are literally in the dark. We’re currently on generator electricity. Water has been cut off for the last two days with the exception of an occasional dribble that lasts for ten to fifteen minutes from a faucet in the garden. We have a nice big pot under it to catch as much water as possible."
Baghdad Burning

This is a bit dated by Jeffrey blogged it today. I'm actually very inclined to agree with much of this post. My motives might be completely different than River's, but many of the facts, remain facts regardless of any motivations. In this I guess I just disagree with Jeffrey & Co. It does noone any good to sweep important facts under the rug. We should look at the situation on the ground in Iraq, try and have the best collection of facts openly on the table, and work out from there. And we need to start holing the administrations feet to the fire, I think they have used up all their "get out of jail" cards. It's time they start paying.
At a minimum they should represent that referendum for what it was. That way everyone will be clear on what work, and what size education campaign is needed to let the Iraqis in on what constitutes standard voting practices.
They should have known at this point, that it's one person, one vote. I think at a minimum people should have been aware that taking more than one ballot, or watching election official openly hand out more than one ballot per voter, was a bad sign. They should have filed a complaint.
Is that too much to ask.