Great news, everyone! According to the President, who would have no reason whatsoever to sugarcoat things like this, Iraq is well on it’s way toward a lovely democracy. After all, if you ignore the beheadings, car bombings, religious uprisings, suicide attacks and kidnappings there is a silver lining�elections are still on track for January.

Well, sort of. Because if you think that Iraq’s upcoming elections embody the promise of a true representative government, you might want to scale your expectations back a bit.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday raised the possibility that Iraq could conduct only limited elections in January, excluding places where violence was considered too severe for people to go to polls.

“Let’s say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn’t because the violence was too great,” Rumsfeld said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“Well, so be it. Nothing’s perfect in life, so you have an election that’s not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet,” he said.

So be it? The article quoted above didn’t mention if Rummy followed up this statement by shrugging his shoulders and passing out “Life’s a bitch, and then you invade one” bumper stickers. Putting aside that much of the violence in Iraq can be attributed to Rumsfeld’s own sloppy post-war planning, it’s insulting to call this farce a shining example of Democracy.

As Americans, would we stand for an election where certain states or regions were left out of the results? Of course not. But using Rumsfeld’s own estimates, up to 25% of Iraqis will lack the ability to vote for their leaders. Citizens living in cities such as Najaf, Fallujah and�incredibly enough�parts of Baghdad will be out of luck. Considering the religious and ethnic conflicts that run through Iraq, anything less than a legitimate vote will likely result in more violence and bloodshed.

No one expects Iraq’s first election to be perfect. But if we are sincere about bringing Democracy to the Middle East, we have to set the bar much higher than this.