UN DETALLE MUY SIGNIFICATIVO que tuvo lugar ayer en un colegio electoral de Bagdad: cuando un terrorista se autodetonó dentro del mismo, los ciudadanos que estaban guardando cola se negaron a irse a casa. Querían votar:

When the suicide bomber at the high school struck shortly before 11 a.m., the polling site had been growing busy after a slow start. But Hadi Saleh Mohammed, the election official in charge, felt he had no choice but to close it down. There were the wounded to evacuate, a gruesome mess to clean up, security to reassess.

While all that went forward, the voters stood at the end of the block, waiting.

"They wanted to come back in," Mohammed said. "They didn't want to go back home."

Why not?

"First, people want to stop this terrorism that's breeding in this country. Second, the religious leadership wanted people to vote. And third, people have had enough of time wasted. They want to get their permanent government."

So the polling place reopened. On the advice of the U.S. troops, the security perimeter was pushed back a block, so people could be frisked twice before entering the school.

[...] And so, after about an hour, voting resumed.

Najila Amin, a housewife who felt the massive blast in her home, made her way to the scene of the crime.

"We're used to explosions," she said. "It's normal."

What surprised her, Amin said, was the steady stream of people walking past her window toward the school. Twenty people were in the street at any moment, stepping carefully in places the street cleaners had missed.

"I didn't expect such numbers," said Amin, 50, who fastened her head scarf so it showed no hair. "It makes me feel people want to protect themselves and have a government that can protect us."

Her companion on the walk to the polls, Taiyma Jamal, 26, said the turnout represented a vote against the insurgency. "People want to be free," she said.

No hay palabras.

Por cierto, y siguiendo con el mejor diario de los EEUU, el Washington Post, su editorial de hoy es absolutamente imprescindible. Tan es así que me tomo la libertad de reproducirlo íntegramente:

FOR MONTHS news from Iraq has told the story of the extremists, those who destroy themselves to murder others and to proclaim the cause of a religious or Baathist dictatorship. Yesterday the world saw and heard, at last, another Iraq, one in which millions of people from all over the country turned out to vote -- even in places where their nominal leaders had proclaimed a boycott, even at polling stations where mortar rounds fell or gunfire rang out. Some danced or distributed chocolates, some wept with joy, others grimly pressed forward as if their lives literally depended on it. A 32-year-old man who lost his leg in a suicide bombing arrived at the polls in Baghdad and told a Reuters reporter, "I would have crawled here if I had to." There were nine suicide bombings, and at least 44 people died, including one U.S. soldier. But the day's message was unmistakable: The majority of Iraqis support the emerging democratic order in their country, and many are willing to risk their lives for it.

Just how large that majority is will become clearer in the days ahead, as votes are counted and turnout around the country is reported. Yesterday Iraqi election authorities and U.N. officials said they believed participation in Baghdad and other places had been greater than expected; one official said the national rate might approach 60 percent, though that seemed to be a rough guess. The count will also reveal whether a clerically backed, Shiite-led alliance won the plurality it expected in the 275-seat National Assembly; whether the secular coalition of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi will survive as a major political force; and whether representation of the Sunni community, the base of the continuing insurgency, will be anywhere near its population share of about 20 percent. Those facts will determine the outlines of the critical Iraqi political process that now begins: first the selection of a new government, then the drafting of a constitution for a state in which majority Shiites must accommodate four other major ethnic groups, including the long-dominant Sunnis.

That course will surely be full of pitfalls, and the extremists will go on trying to kill anyone involved in it. For the emerging democratic regime to have any chance of taking root, U.S. soldiers will have to continue fighting, and dying, to protect it. The elections probably won't make their job any easier, or the price any lower, in the short term. Yesterday, however, Americans finally got a good look at who they are fighting for: millions of average people who have suffered for years under dictatorship and who now desperately want to live in a free and peaceful country. Their votes were an act of courage and faith -- and an answer to the question of whether the mission in Iraq remains a just cause.

Amén.