Sala ad Dihn Province, Iraq-- 

In the US many Americans barely notice Veterans Day.  The banks and post offices are closed.  Federal Employees have the day off.  Some states and local governments may be closed. 

There are ceremonies and memorial services. 

But here in Iraq it is another day at work in a combat zone. 

The Soldiers of the 1-28 Infantry, the Black Lions, went about their work. 

I went with a Platoon to the city council meeting in Ishaki, a small town south of Samarra. 

The Platoon Leader sat back during the meeting and let the Iraqis do their work.  After the meeting he talked about the timeline of some development projects with the Council President. 

The meals were the normal rations heated up by Army cooks.  The big KBR Dining Facilities are for big bases, not little outposts. 

The kitchen at the JCC in Samarra is of typical design. 

If many of the Soldiers realized today was Veterans day, they didn't show it. 

I didn't really realize until I looked at my pocket calendar. 

For decades veterans were older men.  Now they are women and men in their early to mid twenties, many on their second tour in a combat zone. 

They were not drafted.  They did not join when the entire nation was mobilized for war. 

They volunteered when the war in Iraq was unpopular.  They re-enlist knowing they will face a fight in Afghanistan. 

They are the ones willing to stand on the wall that protects the modern culture--the plastic-disposable-drive-thru-strip-mall culture of America from the people who want to burn it all down. 

Too many of the people in the drive-thru culture went about their day today without realizing what the young men I was with today do for them. 

It is a luxury they enjoy because Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and even Airmen will leave the plastic world and enter the real world.

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I do not know what victory looks like in a counter insurgency.  With the recent bombing in Baghdad it is hard to say that a true victory and a true peace has been achieved.  There are still deadly attacks on US troops.

The true success of the war in Iraq will be revealed in the coming months and years.

But what is for sure is that the fight is now being waged by the Iraqi police and, to a lesser degree, the Iraqi army.

After full implementation of the Status of Forces Agreement on June 30th 2009, the US role in the remaining counter insurgency has dwindled.  The US Forces in Iraq are no longer waging an active war against violent extremist networks, their role now is stability, economics, governance and training.

The US Forces Iraq fill a gap between the central government of Iraq and local government.

Here in Saladin province north of Baghdad the 4th Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division is rapidly adapting to the new normal.

In 2007 during the troop surge the 4th Brigade was deployed to some of the roughest parts of Baghdad like West Rashid, Ammel, Bayaa and Rustamya.  I was embedded with unis from the 4th Brigade in 2007 and filmed the soldiers as they actively hunted down Jaish al Mahdi and Al Qaida cells and shot it out with hidden gunmen.  I went with them on grueling daily patrols through the neighborhoods to conduct census and intelligence gathering missions.

In 2007 the Iraqi Army and Police were in the background and at best they were merely ineffective, at worst they were aligned with the active enemy.

Now, in late 2009, the 4th is back in Iraq in the area around Tikrit with a whole new mission.

  (The companion story to this photo essay can be found here )

General Abdullah (Ret.) and LTC Cain, commanding officer of the 2-32 talk politics in Tikrit.

JD with LTC Ahmed, commander of an elite police unit, the RDU

The RDU's unit patch

This line from a Washington Post story jumped out at me:

"The arrival of war dead at Dover has long pitted free speech advocates against the government, which had been accused of using the ban to hide the horror of war from the public--especially as casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan began to climb."

The article is by Christian Davenport.

I'm at a little outpost in northern Iraq, fresh back from a patrol where we met with a local Sheik.  The previous day I had rode with US Soldiers to a logistics base on a resupply run and while there picked up a few back issues of Stars and Stripes where I read the story.

In the story, a previous graph has a quote from University of Delaware Journalism Professor Ralph Begleiter one of the above mentioned free speech advocates.  Begeleiter said, "Taking pictures of the returning casualties to Dover is a measure of the human cost of war.  Do you want the government ultimately to have control over what we see or not see?  Or do you want independent observers, an independent press or media, relaying those images?"

Mr. Begleiter if you really want to understand the human cost of war, don't stand on a fucking tarmac, get embedded and see the human cost of war up close and personal where the price is actually paid.

But many of the free speech advocates have no desire to put themselves at risk to tell the stories of the women and men who have willingly put themselves in harms way.

They want to do it on the cheap, standing on concrete in the US at a scheduled time rather than face the capricious hazards of war standing on the sands of Iraq or rocks of Afghanistan.

Many of those free speech advocates are interested only in the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines as props.  As the story illustrates, very few of the arrivals at Dover are covered by the media.

When a reporter is embedded with US forces they at least have to share some of the risks and possibly themselves become another account in the human cost of war.

I have been ready to pay that price for the last five years and nearly had to pay it a few times.  How many of the so-called speech advocates have been willing to pay that price?

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UPDATE:  Afghanistan's Electoral Complaint Commission has ordered an audit/recount in response to "Clear and convincing evidence of fraud."

 In the lore of American elections, Cook county, Illinois looms large.  Cook county, according the legends, if not in fact, always reported the returns of elections last--despite being in the City of Chicago.  Rural backwaters and the suburbs would report the returns and then after every other vote was counted, Cook county would report returns giving the winning margin to whatever candidate the machine favored.

I have a concern that Afghanistan's version of Cook county is in the provinces of Farah, Nimroz, Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Khost and Paktika.

What causes this concern of mine is not just that those areas are the last places to report returns or that they going to Karzai in a range of 70% to 83% but that Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission still has not released the total turn out number nationally or by province.

Take a look at this interactive map .  (Update: most of this post uses Sunday/Monday's numbers.  An update is added at the end)

If the number of total ballots cast is announced, it makes it much, much harder for counting fraud to be carried out.  But as it stands now, ballots can be added after the fact to create the winning margin.

In Afghanistan the ballots are in printed in the form of a bound tablet similar to a legal pad.  Individual ballots are tore off and handed to the voter.

After the polls close and the counting begins, the first step is to count the total number of ballots.  This is done by counting those in the clear plastic tub and comparing that to the number of tablets used and ballot pages remaining.

The ballots are extremely large owing to the 40 Presidential candidates.  Counting is done by hand.  These two factors make the counting process slow and difficult.  But, the total number of ballots cast should have been known within 48 hours.  It should have been the first solid number reported by the polling stations and the IEC.

But more than two weeks later, it is not published.

If the number of ballots cast is published immediately, the fraud is limited to percentages and more easily detected.  In other words, the candidate benefiting from the fraud would have to get increasingly higher percentages from the Cook county style provinces and even then, he still might not get enough.

Corrupt election officials could over report voting, but would be limited still to plausibility--no one would believe 100% turn out in Kandahar.

In the 2004 Presidential election there were 308,896 total valid votes in Kandahar province.  Karzai got 91% of the vote in the province.

Without the hard tally of total votes, corrupt officials can keep adding the total number of votes in-line with plausible percentages, and deliver the winning margin.

The hard turn out numbers are ideal, but with the data the IEC has already published and little math, we can improve our chances of detecting brazen fraud.

The province with the most Cook county potential is Kandahar.

Currently Karzai is leading with 82.3% of the vote with 30.9% of the polling stations tallied in Kandahar.

There are 87 polling centers in Kandahar province that have reported in.  By this listing 245 total polling centers and 1,545 polling stations were open on election day .  The actual count is by polling stations.  Some polling centers have up to 8 polling stations.

This listing shows 1,283 polling stations.

So far there are 78,833 valid votes cast, Karzai has 64,901 of them. (Sunday's numbers)

The average turnout so far is 906 votes per polling center or 213 votes per polling station.  If this number goes up dramatically, it is evidence something unusual is happening.

That would lead to an estimated 221,970 valid votes in Kandahar province.  Considering that turnout was reported to be almost non-existent in Kandahar province, even the 30% reduction from the turnout in the 2004 elections should raise eyebrows.  If the final number greatly exceeds the prediced number of votes, it is evidence of the Cook county effect.

If Karzai holds steady at 82.3%, he will pick up another 104,000 votes in Kandahar.

Now, here is where the fraud detection math comes in.  (This is also where I go out on a limb into a broad generalization instead of sitting around for a few days crunching all the numbers.)

Nationwide 4,295,326 valid votes have been cast.

74.2% of all polling stations have been tallied.

26,275 polling stations were open.  19,496 have been tallied.

So far, the average is 220 votes per polling station for a wild ass guess prediction of 5,780,500 total votes.

Karzai is on track to pick up 2,809,323.  He needs 2,896,030 to win outright and avoid the runoff. 

The best places for him to close the gap are Kandahar, Paktika and Khost provinces.  If the number of votes cast starts greatly exceeding the current predictions in those provinces, then you have a good notion that the Cook county effect is in play.

There is also an indicator of some type of effect in play.

On August 25th, with 10% of the polling stations reporting, Karzai had 41.8% of the vote.

On August 27th, 17.2% of the polling stations had been tallied.  Karzai was winning with 44.8%.

On August 28th , with 35% of stations reporting, Karzai had 46.3% and on September 3rd he was up to 47.3% with 60% of the polling stations tallied.

Karzai now has 48.6% with 74.2% of polling stations reporting. (Sunday's numbers)

The only public poll prior to the election showed Karzai getting 44% of the vote.

The statistical jumps are slowing, but by the time 35% of polling stations are reported, even if it is not truly random, it is large enough to make an accurate projection from.

A jump from 46.3% to 47.3 to 48.6% is highly unlikely.

If the total gets to 50.1% the explanation is most likely found in this New York Times report .

The Times cites western officials who say "only about 25,000 people actually voted there."

By the calculations above, the turnout will be reported at 221,970.  The Times reports it could be more than 350,000, exceeding the turnout in the 2004 election, which would be some brazen fraud.

Kandahar is looking like it could be Afghanistan's Cook county.

UPDATE: 

Right before I went to post this blog, the IEC updated their statistics.  Karzai now leads with 54.1%.

Where did all those votes come from?  Lets look at the recent numbers from Kandahar.

With 61% of the polling stations tallied, there are supposedly 208,045 valid votes cast.

By the reporting yesterday, there were 213 votes per polling station.  Today that average is up to 263 votes per polling station.  Or, more accurately for our puposes, the most recent 386 stations , accounting for 129,212 votes, reported and an average of 334 total votes.

The uptick is just as I predicted would be seen if there was brazen fraud of the Cook county style.

Kandahar is now on track to have a supposed turnout of between 337,429 and 375,091.

Yesterday my prediction was for 221,970.

The same trends are showing up in Paktika and Khost provinces.