Well mark me down as a pessimist. We are very unlikely to see a unified democratic and peaceful Iraq any time soon, if ever. It seems more likely that Iraq will continue its degeneration into civil war. Elections are good but in and of themselves they don’t buy us much. Nothing prevents guerillas from voting one day and then planting a bomb the next. They are to weak to win much in head to head combat but they do not have to all the guerilla needs to do is live to fight another day.