E mail from Iraq

I have been E mailing a good buddy of mine who is in Iraq back and forth for the last few months . He said I could post some of it if I wanted . So here it is . I may post some others later but I found this one was more timely.

.....Politics are a funny thing. Three days ago Iraq had their parliament elections, although the results will not be out for possibly ten days or more they estimated about 11 million people may have gone to the polls; which isn't bad since they only have 15 million registered voters (so about 70%), anyway the day was very similar to the day they voted on the referendum, violence wasn't escalated, perhaps even a little less. Here in a place where people are killed everyday for their political beliefs and violence is used as a median to sway the people, so many people stopped fighting or hiding from the fighting to vote. I wonder if people other places have the belief in their political system/process that they would put their life at risk just to vote? Or did the Iraqi people vote because we protected them? Or is the insurgency trying to support the political process in an attempt to gain a foothold in the new government in it's infancy? What ever the case may be I'm still glad I will be watching most of it on TV vs. up close and personal. I suppose we will see what happens, hard to make a prediction from my vantage point. I suppose you deal with political discussions all the time; sorry to throw one at you, but one of your posts got me thinking about voting(The one about $100 contributions/ Their was a reference to re-elections)......