The New Iraq: Voters without Fingers. My favorite Arab columnist, the brilliant Joseph Samahah of As-Safir, has an article on the new Iraqi constitution, titled, The Constitution of Khalilzadeh: The Obituary of the Iraqi State?. In it, he finds this statement of the head of the Iraqi electoral commission very telling when he said by way of instructions to electoral watchers around the country: "The polling official watching the ballot box should verify that the voter has dipped his right index finger in the indelible ink, and to verify that the ink covers the nail of his finger before letting him to place the voting ballot inside the box. And if the voter's index finger is missing, the official who watches the ballot boxes will dip [in ink] another finger of the right hand of the voter, and if he is missing the right hand [altogether], he will dip one of the fingers of the left hand, and if the voter has no fingers at all, it is then not necessary to put ink at all." Samahah then comments: "Then this is the Iraq that is moving from the age of wars and oppression which cause the severing of hands and fingers to the age of disintegration and dissolution that was inaugurated by the American conquest, and sponsored by the UN that attributes to itself the task of organizing the link between the index finger, if available, and the "democratic" indelible ink."