All's quiet on the Eastern front...

[lilwings]

After the media made this election in Iraq into the biggest party since New Years' Eve, it would appear that this was one party the insurgents didn't RSVP for.

Right now, it's 3:45 in the morning on the 31st in Iraq. Ballots are being counted at various sites around the provinces, and convoys arrive from around our area of operations to drop final tallies and store the original ballots before movement to their final destination. I sit in the TOC (tactical operations center) for the Brigade, and hear a welcome sound of quiet. Nothing is happening. Marshal Law has been in place for the past four days leading up to the election, and the insurgents expended all their energy on a series of failed attacks the night before the polls opened. Nights normally filled with the sound of counter fires from our artillery battery near by (loud enough to rattle the doors here in the TOC) have now fallen silent. Our Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) circles over the city of Ba'qubah, and shows nothing but a peaceful city. Throughout the day, video streamed from it, showing Iraqis dancing in the streets of the city, standing in line for voting, and going about their daily lives.

What little effort that was made by the insurgent forces ended swiftly and never detered a happy crowd from exercising a justice they have not known for over 50 years... the justice of choice.

Today a woman talked to a friend of mine while he was on patrol. She told him that she had just come from voting. Saddam, she told him through his translator, took the lives of her son and daughter. Today, she said and wept, she cast a bullet into Saddam's heart when she cast her vote. She cried and so did my friend, a combat hardened veteran who had seen some of the worst fighting in cities like Ba'qubah and Fallujah.

This is why we fight.