Baghdad blogger Ali looks to his people's first legally imperative election by briefly glancing behind him:
The stakes are too high for [terrorsts] just as they are for us. We've been waiting for the moment when we can decide our future all our lives and now it's happening and I can't tell you how excited that makes me and all freedom loving Iraqis. I feel like after voting I would not care what would happen to me. I would say my word, voice my will loud and clear in public for the first time in my life and that means almost everything to me. The terrorist can kill me and many of the Iraqis who are going to vote, but we would die proud. We will regain our self esteem and our pride that Saddam and his thugs took away by humiliating us, torturing and killing our friends and beloved ones infront of our eyes and then spitting in our faces after that, and all we could do was what we had to do to avoid more death and torture, we could only praise them after each murder and each crime. It made us hate ourselves and the whole world, lose our trust in everyone and just keep living a life that was worse than death but one that we still couldn't sacrifice for a good cause fearing for our families fate after our death.
We're told hell operates the same way. This election will be the first of many, and it will be one day after the last day of an Iraq never having known government by consent of the people. The nightmare is nearly over.