Kabul--The streets were empty today, which is disconcerting for two reasons.  The first is that the Kabul streets are always congested.  But today a person could actually move around the city at decent speed in vehicle--something I have never experienced.  I barely recognized the city without the traffic jams.

The second is from my personal history.  The two times I was in Iraq and the streets were empty bad things happened.

I will be tasked with visiting and filming polling sites Thursday.  There are a lot of people who don't want to go to what are considered target sites.  So I will go instead.  It is what I do.

A few bombs will go off tomorrow for the benefit of the international news media.  They will be deadly.  Innocent people exercising their civic rights to vote will be killed.  Many more will be maimed.

There is not tactical advantage for the Taliban in blowing up a polling site.  The people killed by the Taliban are likely to be normal Muslim Afghans.

But the Taliban's agenda requires headlines and gross ratings points to fuel their dream--the departure of International Forces and their return to power.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a US military officer about the situation here.  I told him a fact he already knows--the Taliban and other groups cannot expel the International Coalition.  The Taliban cannot even topple the pathetic Karzai regime.

Then I told him who could expel NATO and the International Coalition--me.  The news media.  The politicians of the Coalition nations.  The voters.

The goal of the bombs on election day are not to disrupt the elections--they are to earn gross ratings points that Afghanistan is too far gone to repair, that it is not worth it.  The elections just guarantee plenty of media coverage and extra gross ratings points. 

The polling places open in a few hours.

I'll file reports as I can.

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