Ghaith's photo essay for the BBC
The BBC website has a good little photo essay about Iraqis' views of the election. It's been compiled by Raed's friend Ghaith, which gives me a lot of confidence.
Alongside it, they have another burst of the sort of highly mediated, "blog"-like thing they did once before from Iraq. This one has some interesting material. But a disproportionate number of the (invited) "contributors" are expats--whether "contractors", whatever that means, or at least one US military person. They don't really seem to know much about Iraq.
So while the "blog" is a little bit interesting, it's not nearly as interesting as Ghaith's photo essay.
There's a place for good journalism. There's a place for (real) blogs. But fake blogs-- h'mmm.
Professor Cole's blog the day before the Iraqi elections reports that Zogby (the pollster) predicts that only 9% of eligible Iraqi Sunnis plan to vote...if that turns out to be true, the election will be discredited...but then again if Zogby's polling figures could be relied upon, there would have been a 6% swing in the popular vote and John Kerry would be the US president.