But it struck me that it might be useful to develop a program of what to look for on election day in Iraq. This is a little gutsy because I’ll seem pretty stupid if these elections are postponed. But I’m not worried. If it’s one thing we’ve all learned in four years it’s that for better or worse when President Bush formulates a policy, he sticks with it. So here goes. And remember Iraqis are voting for a new parliament to govern the country and replace the interim constitution with a permanent one.

Number one. How large is the Shiite voter turnout? In absolute numbers, in percentage of eligible voters and in percentages of the votes cast. For decades, the Shiites comprising roughly sixty percent of the Iraqi population have been oppressed, terrorized and denied any meaningful role in running the country under Sadam Hussein. He and his Sunni pals might not have succeeded in developing nuclear weapons, but they did a good job of keeping the Shiites in their place, which was no place at all.

Well those days are over. The Shiite leaders, clergy of course, recovered from their knee jerk anti American reaction in the early days of reconstruction and finally decided that the American military was handing them the keys to the kingdom, metaphorically of course, because some in Washington still believe Iraq will be a democracy along the lines of France or Spain. There are always wild optimists in any bunch.

The new parliament is certain to be dominated by the Shiites. They have the votes, and they will cast them. The only question is what percentage of the seats in the new legislature will they get. The hope in Washington is that they’ll get sixty percent of the seats and no more. The fear is that because of low Sunni turnout, the Shiites will get more than seventy percent of the vote. In that case, the Shiites will be free to run the country as they’d like. The Sunnis will then feel disenfranchised, and the country is likely to slide toward civil war and dismemberment.

There is one irony here worth noting. The only other major Middle East government dominated by Shiites is Iran. The U.S. is making a risky bet that the animosity between the Persians in Iran and the Arabs in Iraq that led to so much bloodshed in their war during the 1980s will override any common bond between Shiites that could give the mullahs in Tehran, our avowed enemy, influence over Iraqi governmental policy.

Second and most critically, what will happen on election day in the Sunni triangle? Will widespread violence and the intimidation that has been so pervasive in recent weeks prevent Sunnis from voting?

Those Sunni leaders enjoying Assad’s warm hospitality in Syria and plotting the insurgents’ attacks have made a calculated decision. They know that twenty percent of the vote is theirs for the taking, but that would mean being a minority in a Shiite dominated democracy. They would rather have zero percent of the vote and drive the country toward civil war and dismemberment. In that event, they would hope to end up with their own state closely allied to Syria which has a Sunni majority. Baghdad would become a divided city the way Jerusalem was until Israel unified it in 1967. But as the Sunni percentage in the new parliament approaches twenty percent, the insurgents lose out.

Third, look at the percent breakdown of the votes in the city of Kirkuk. In northern Iraq, the Kurds have built their own unofficial state within a state. The Kurds are not Arabs, unlike essentially the rest of Iraq, and they comprise approximately twenty percent of the Iraqi nation. The Kurds also speak their own language.

Under Saddam Hussein, the Kurds suffered enormous persecution, including attacks with deadly chemicals. They were stripped of some of their lands, and Arabs were resettled there. All of that ended in 1991 when the U.S. led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in the first Iraqi war. From that time on under U.S. protection, almost four million Kurds have lived fairly normal lives in a democratic autonomous region. While the rest of Iraq has been the scene of bitter fighting and car bombs in recent months, the Kurdish region, policed by its own army, has been peaceful.

In the election, the Kurds are likely to vote to the full extent possible. A potential flashpoint will come when a permanent constitution is drawn up. Wary of domination by the Shiites, which will strip them of their de facto autonomy, the Kurds pressed hard and successfully for a virtual veto in the interim constitution. In essence, they want the new Iraq to be a federation. If that condition is not met, and perhaps even if it is, the Kurds may opt for their own independent state.

The immediate prize in the election is the city of Kirkuk. On the edge of the Kurdish area, Kirkuk has a delicate ethnic balance among the city’s diverse communities, namely Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen and Assyrian Christians. The area around Kirkuk also happens to contain Iraq’s richest oil fields.

The Kurds are understandably anxious to get control of Kirkuk in the election. Ideally, they’d like to make it the capital of their autonomous region or independent nation and use its great oil wealth to support their economy. Kurds who were driven out of Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein have been rushing back to establish residence and to vote.

To the extent the Kurds succeed and prevail in the vote in Kirkuk and the surrounding area, they will be a tougher party during any negotiations about the future of Iraq. As a result, the U.S. would like an even split among the ethnic groups in the Kirkuk vote.

These are the three key issues on election day. We should not however lose sight of one major fact. If Iraqi, or at least many of them are voting for their leaders, this is a tremendous accomplishment. It’s such a long way from Saddam Hussein’s death squads, torture, and the chemical warfare which he waged on segments of the Iraqi population.