Anyone can invade a country, smash it up, take it over, then hold "free elections", Doug. It's easy. You just decide ahead of time who the bad guys are, and kill them all or drive them underground. You then arrange for a few arbitrary (and probably bogus) parties to be set up with straw man candidates (people not on your hit list), and you hold your silly "free elections". Nothing changes. The Germans could have done it anytime they decided to in occupied France in WWII. They didn't, because their political situation did not rest on the same facile assumptions as does yours. But...if their public had needed the phony sop of a "free election" in France to make everything look copacetic, then I'm sure they would have had one. And nothing would have changed. The German Army would still have been running the show...with the approval of the "freely elected" French stooges that won the election.

"Democracy" as it's called in the USA when they export it to conquered lands, is window-dressing, Doug. It's a sham. A joke.    It's an outer appearance covering over a colonial occupation. Afghanistan is not free, it's occupied. Iraq is not free. It's occupied. Iraq will never be free due to the idiotic machinations of the Bush administration. It wasn't free before Bush invaded, it isn't free now, and it probably won't be free after the USA leaves either.

An election in Iraq is a outward show designed to fool gullible people in America who think at the level of Dick and Jane books when it comes to facing reality. It sure as hell isn't fooling anyone else.

You live in the country, Doug, that is under the false impression that it INVENTED freedom. Sorry, but that just isn't so.