After Iraq's Election, the Real Fight

I still remember shuttling all night between my office at the National Security Council and the State Department's Election Watch Task Force. It was Jan. 30, 2005, Iraq was holding its first meaningful elections in decades, and I was supposed to brief President George W. Bush in a few hours. When morning came, I made my way to the library in his residence and described to the president how our early anxieties in watching then-Iraqi President Ghazi Yawar cast his ballot in an eerily empty Baghdad polling booth had transformed into exhilaration as more and more Iraqis poured onto the streets and into the voting stations.