Voting

I've been uneasy the past day or two, hoping that things would go well in Iraq but concerned about what might happen, and constantly checking CNN.com. It looks like voting has gone fairly smoothly and turnout has been high (estimates are around 70% of registered voters). That means that there is still a chance of a decent outcome for Iraq in the next few years. I doubt that the election will have any immediate impact on the insurgency, but if voting had failed then that would have meant that there was little hope of progress. We won't really know what has resulted from this war until a couple years after the army has left Iraq, so now I guess it's back to a much less salient combination of hope and uneasiness amidst the uncertainty.