Seeker Blog

A good, short summary by the NYT on election security strategy. “Read the whole thing”. One example I thought was simply brilliant:

Every soldier on election duty heard intelligence warnings that insurgents would try to slip bomb-laden suicide vests into polling places beneath the long gowns of an Iraqi woman or of a man in woman’s clothing. That presented a particular difficulty in a society where it is not acceptable for a man to search a woman, and there were hardly enough women in the Iraqi Interior Ministry to spend a day at every polling site conducting body searches. But American officers devised a solution. They agreed on a plan with Iraqi security forces, who were the visible presence inside each polling place, that one of the first women to arrive at larger polling places would be searched, and that woman would in turn be asked to search 10 others. One of those 10 would then search 10 others before voting, and so on in a daisy chain.

The solution was evidently 100% effective. But also consider the personal bravery of every Iraqi woman who undertook her assignment. If she found one of the vested terrorists she would almost certainly die.

Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commands the First Infantry Division, said in an e-mail message on Sunday night that the insurgents’ “ineffective attacks” hampered fewer than 3 percent of the 951 polling stations in the four provinces in north-central Iraq that his forces oversee. Commanders warned, however, against being lulled into any false sense of security after the voting. “The post-election period will still be a high-threat period as it is likely, in my opinion, that the insurgents will try to detract from the successes of today,” General Ham said. He predicted that insurgents now would single out voting officials, Iraqi security forces “and certainly the winners, once they are announced.”