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The papers of record on both coasts are telling us how democracy is playing out in Iraq: under cover of darkness. First from the New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 15 - The threat of death hung so heavily over the election rally, held this week on the fifth floor of the General Factory for Vegetable Oil, that the speakers refused to say whether they were candidates at all.

"Too dangerous," said Hussein Ali, who solicited votes for the United Iraqi Alliance, a party fielding dozens of candidates for the elections here. "It's a secret."

And then Mr. Ali and his colleagues left, escorted by men with guns.

A similar story in the Los Angeles Times, only with the particular emphasis on violence against women:

BAGHDAD — It is a measure of how unsafe it has become for women seeking office in Iraq that one, in a moment of grim humor, joked recently that she was afraid her husband would find out she was a candidate.

Aside from about a dozen women with established national profiles, female candidates in Iraq's upcoming elections are running in secret, forced underground by the threat of violence.

Is it really wise to hold elections for candidates that are too afraid for their lives to even acknowledge that they are, in fact, candidates? How will that possibly get better once they have to, if elected, show up for work and deliberate on an Iraqi constitution.

Bush apologists hope that once the elections are over the insurgency's back will be finally broken. Of course, they've said that so many times with so many different tipping points I don't know how these claims can be realistically trusted. It's clear that, once the elections are over, the assembly will have a huge target on its back. Unless the parliamentarians continue to stay underground while governing. And how exactly would that be considered representative democracy?

The insurgent's presence is simply stronger than the military one at this point, thanks to the gross negligence of the Administration's postwar "strategy".