Saudi Arabian Votes

From the Wash Post:

More than 1,800 candidates were contesting 127 seats in the capital and surrounding villages on Thursday, with almost 700 of them running for seven seats in Riyadh. Only 149,000 out of 600,000 eligible voters have registered to vote. Two more phases will cover the rest of the country in March and April.

Whole account here.

Let's not confuse this with democracy (well, maybe with the 18th century equivalent) but let's also not pretend it isn't a significant change (however small)–or that it likely would have happened absent George W. Bush's foreign policy. I don't think we should have invaded Iraq and I remain intensely skeptical of the efficacy of the region-shaping aspirations of Dubya, but it may well be that the occupation of Iraq may have a salutary effect on the area beyond anything already going on in that country.