Barnes Blog
Though Hanna, who spoke fluent English, said he favored a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops, other working-class voters said they wanted a much quicker withdrawal. "We need the new government to ask the Americans to leave," said Hassan Ali, a worker who was voting for the first time because he just turned 18.
Whalid Ibrahim Khalil, a mechanic in Mosul, said through a translator that he didn't think there was much doubt there would be a speedy American withdrawal.
"Of course the Americans are going to go home; they want to leave," he said. Khalil said he too was voting for Allawi, though he struggled to articulate exactly why, other than peer pressure. "Most people here are voting for Allawi."
Soldiers' prep work for safe polling
In Mosul, the Americans took a slightly more hands-on approach to the election security than the military advertised. The day before the election, American infantry platoons visited polling sites and surveyed the security barriers that had been emplaced.
GIs gave the Iraqi police remedial lessons on how to string concertina wire and distributed metal detectors to the officers. Where they saw gaps in the defenses, they urged the police to string more wire or position officers. At other sites, they sat down with police and army officials and reviewed what their planned response would be to different kinds of threats and attacks.
Election day in Mosul began with a bomb attack that killed an Iraqi guard and wounded an Iraqi police officer on the eastern half of the city. Because those attacks were in Kurdish neighborhoods, American military officials speculated they were placed by Sunni nationalists and aimed at keeping down the Kurdish vote.
But besides the early-morning bombings, the security held throughout the city on election day. Col. Ali Al-Ajeal, a local police chief in a section of western Mosul, said there was some disagreement between Iraqi police and army officials about who would escort the ballots to the election commission. But he said there was cooperation when it came to polling site security.
"It was an excellent election," he said. "We had no problems. We worked hard with the election officials."
Iraqi police searched people at least three times before they entered the polling site. And at least at the single polling site reporters were allowed to visit in Mosul, there were several dozen election workers and police. While the Iraqis guarded the polls, American armored vehicles patrolled the roads. Still, there was not much to do. The Americans stopped a few ambulances because of a report that there was a fake ambulance on the road. They also stopped a donkey being led down the street by a group of children. A search of the donkey's pouches turned up only vegetables.
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