Tactical dawn .. a few hours away in Iraq.

This is when the shit will hit the fan, if it is to hit the fan. We will know shortly what fresh hell is in store for Iraq. Tet will come today (Saturday) in Iraq. Today is the time to ratchet up the fear. Tomorrow, "election" day, is too late. But tomorrow will be hell too, if today is.

The lovely Campbell Brown (MSNBC) just did a report on Tweety's show from her hunkered-down position in the Green Zone. I fear that objective, on-the-site reports are over for a couple of days. Scared, hung-over "reporters" will be filing from the Green Zone and their hotel rooms. Look for reports from the roof of the Caravelle Hotel, too ... oops, wrong war! Sorry!

...promising that every polling place will be hit.

If it were anywhere else, or anytime else, I'd say that was a bombastic boast. However, something tells me that the Iraqi resistance is actually capable of doing that.

That makes it easier for the insurgents to operate ... eh?

I'm losing track here. Originally everything was secret, including the candidates. Now they've published the candidates (I think), but I haven't heard anything more about polling places.

Of course, it's kind of hard to vote at a polling place when you don't know where it is! (Though some found out just that here last November.)

-wildflower

this weekend is going to go down in history, but not for what * would like for all of us to believe.

it's going to be a massacre.

I would not wager on it. But I wager on nothing!

AWOL & Co. will play it for all they can - basking in the glow of bringing "democracy" to Iraq. They will crow in triumph and the RW punditocracy will say "see we told you so". There will be a deal and BushCo's man Allawi will be Prime Minister.

Then it will be business as usual and the violence will escalate again.

This is just like the capture of Saddam or the "transfer of sovereignty" - other "landmark" days that the administration crowed about. A few days of good headlines for Bush in the midst of a total disaster.

Hope you are right, dude! 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 ....

He's gone four times in the last year. He says that he's fairly optimistic about the voter turnout.

So it won't be that high even if everyone who registered turns up.

I'm sure our state-run media will laud the turnout anyway, though.

I know a guy who is very pessimistic about the voter turnout. He thinks that the fix is in. Actually, he is moi! Get real dude!

your travels in Iraq haven't provided you with the same sense of optimism?

I know a guy who can turn water into wine.

Not really, but that's about how much credibility I give your post.

Nice try though.

If I was going to try and create credibility to push a view on a message board I'd probably say that I've been to Iraq four times in the last year.

as great as they have been blustering. Today and tomorrow will tell.

Certainly, the focus on disrupting elections suggests that they'll go for the gusto in the next two days, but remember the words of Nathan Bedford Forrest: "Hit 'em where they ain't." Unpredictability is the hallmark of properly run insurgencies. The next couple of days may be mild, and that doesn't necessarily mean the insurgents are weak.

Mind you, I don't think so either; I expect some serious ugliness coming up. U.S. forces will be very visible, and if the guerrillas focus on them rather than voters, it could be nasty.

What impresses me most about the insurgents is that we just don't know a damn thing about them: how many, how elaborate the command control, really much of anything. The dismissals of the bulk being foreign seems to be horse shit, and the assumption of them being a cadre of Ba'athists is likewise unfounded. It may very well be many disconnected groups.

This certainly would be a perfect time for an all-out nationwide assault, though. Then again, it would be a perfect time to have complete calm, lull us into false security, and then hit us and the winners simultaneously. It's all just ugly, and we've been supreme dicks and incompetents in every way imaginable. Sorry, world; we suck.

but I still believe the country is headed for a bloody civil war.

On edit: Iraq. Sorry about that.

We called that bloody civil war early on. Here it comes. Duck and cover!

It's difficult to imagine. But, having lived through the Vietnam era -- you much closer than I did, of course -- we have long memories about how much the US can damage a country that doesn't deserve it.

Or will Kerry win? Diebold and Shrub probably set things up so that when a voting machine had a problem, it would be sent to Iraq for repairs. All those votes for Kerry in the machines not counted. And Shrub says that Iraqi polling places are targets of "insurgents"? Bullshit I say. It's part of the whole plan to get rid of those votes for Kerry. Have someone "attack" the polling places and blow up the voting machines. No paper trail. Hell. No voting machines. No way to prove he won.