Forged ballots from Iran

UPDATE:  The head of Iraq's border guards says the report below, of forged ballots being intercepted at the border with Iran, is bogus, an effort to discredit the election process.

The latest from Iraq’s friend to the East:

Less than two days before nationwide elections, Iraqi border police seized a tanker truck on Tuesday that had just crossed from Iran filled with thousands of forged ballots, an official at Iraq's Interior Ministry said.

Hat tip to the Iraqis for catching this…  “The tanker was seized by agents with the U.S.-trained border protection force at the Iraqi town of Badra”.  I wonder how they found them?  Thorough searching?  Were they poorly hidden?  Were the border guards tipped off?

…said the Iranian truck driver told the police under interrogation that…

Oh, dear!  I do hope there wasn’t coercion involved!  Okay, maybe I hope there was a little coercion.

The official…  said he did know where the driver was headed, or what he intended to do with the ballots.

But I’m going to go out on a limb and guess election tampering was somehow part of the plan.

Agents of the Iranian government are believed to be supporting the two main Shiite political parties here — the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party —with money and other assistance.

Seems like we might be able to test that theory.  Whose names were filled in on the forged ballots?  Might be a good indication of who the Iranians support… unless they planned for us to find the ballots.

Then there’s this…

In recent months, U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington, along with their British counterparts, have contended that sophisticated bombs have been smuggled across the border from Iran, and that some of them have been used against U.S. and British soldiers.

You know… I’m pretty sure we’ve got some pretty sophisticated bombs of our own, don’t we?  Since the Iranians are apparently a few short now, shouldn’t we arrange a trade, of some sort?  Send some of ours their way?  We could even… arm them and everything… as a courtesy.