The first person to vote in Babylon in the Iraqi parliamentary election was 65-year-old Jasim Hameed, who is wheelchair-bound.

		Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476).

"I'm here at this early hour because I want to challenge the terrorists who want to kill the democratic process in Iraq and I want to encourage the healthy people to vote," Mr. Hameed said.

Because Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, threatened to kill those who cast ballots, Mr. Hamid was risking his life.

In a communique issued on election eve, Zarqawi vowed to "ruin the democratic wedding of heresy and immorality."

The threats were not idle. The police in Babil province caught two brothers with 72 mines and IEDs (improvised explosive devices). They planned to plant them on the ways to the polling stations, according to an Iraqi correspondent on the scene.

Despite the threats, turnout was so great the hours for voting had to be extended in many places to accommodate people waiting in line.

Early estimates are turnout approached two-thirds of registered voters. That's higher than it had been for the election of an interim parliament in January or for the referendum on the constitution in October, and much higher than it usually is for U.S. presidential elections.

Turnout was higher chiefly because of a massive turnout among Sunni Muslims, many of whom had boycotted the first two elections.

"It's the first time I have tasted the freedom to express my view," Asmeal Nouri, 60, a Sunni Arab living in Kirkuk, told a reporter for Reuters.

And despite the threats, the mood of Iraqi voters was festive, said W. Thomas Smith Jr. in his National Review Online column Thursday. A former Marine and paratrooper embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, Mr. Smith wrote that "adults are cheering, clapping hands, beating drums, singing, dancing and waving at passing U.S. and Iraqi military vehicles."

The high turnout among Sunnis was a repudiation of al-Qaida. And the fact that the voting proceeded with few incidents was the clearest indication yet of the terror group's diminishing effectiveness.

At several polling places in al Anbar province, security against al-Qaida was provided by Sunni militias once allied with the terror group, a split in the "insurgency" too wide for even our news media to ignore.

Web logger Bill Roggio, embedded with the U.S. Marines, reported turnout was high in the "Wild West" town of Barwana, from which al-Qaida was evicted only two months ago.

"The poll site sits right beneath the now destroyed Barwana bridge, where Zarqawi terrorists routinely executed residents for not conforming to their perverse interpretation of Islam," Mr. Roggio wrote. "Barwana, once part of Zarqawi's self declared 'Islamic Republic of Iraq,' is now the scene of al-Qaida's greatest nightmare."

"The Iraqi people are seeing that the impossible might become the possible after the election," Sgt. 1st Class Larry Bull of the 3rd Infantry Division told Thomas Smith.

But whether Iraq becomes a stable democracy depends almost as much on how Iraqis voted as that they voted.

Iraqis chose from 231 different lists, so it will be a week or so before we know who won, and a month or so before a new government is formed, because it is extremely unlikely that any one slate won anywhere close to a majority of the 275 seats in parliament.

If the voting divided sharply along sectarian and ethnic lines, the new government could be crippled at birth.

The interim government is dominated by a coalition of 18 Shiite religious parties -- some with uncomfortably close ties to the mullahs in Iran -- which together won half the vote in January.

That percentage will fall, mostly because of the increased Sunni participation, but also because the government of Ibrahim al Jaafari is widely viewed among Iraqis as inept and corrupt. The Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, endorsed the Jaafari slate in January, but withheld his blessing this time.

"Although I am a religious man, all religiously based groups are completely out as far as I am concerned," said Iraqi Web logger Alaa, who's a Shiite, in the blog "The Mesopotamian."

One key is how many Shiites joined Alaa in voting for secular Shias such as former prime minister Iwad Allawi, Ahmed Chalabi and Mithaal al Alusi.

The other is how the Sunnis voted.

"What gives me hope is that most of the Sunni Arabs I've talked to ... have voiced support for Allawi because of his stance supporting a united Iraq," Maj. Mike Doherty of the 3rd Infantry Division told Mr. Smith.