Who needs primaries?

Iraq now has a novel, efficient way of winnowing out the field of candidates for its upcoming elections:

Gunmen shot and killed three candidates running in Iraq’s Jan. 30 elections, officials said Tuesday, as a suicide bombing killed two people outside the offices of a leading Shiite political party.



With insurgents trying to ruin the election, officials announced that Iraq will seal its borders, extend a curfew and restrict movement to protect voters during the balloting. President Bush spoke Tuesday morning with Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the latest in a series of conversations between the two leaders on Iraq’s efforts to ensure maximum participation in the election.



Two of the slain candidates belonged to Allawi’s political coalition, the Iraqi National Accord, a member of the group said.



Alaa Hamid, who was running for the 275-member National Assembly, was shot dead Monday in the southern port city of Basra in front of his family, the official said on condition of anonymity. Hamid was also the deputy chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee in Basra.



Riad Radi, who was running in the local race for Basra’s provincial council on a list supported by Allawi’s INC, was killed Sunday when masked gunmen fired on his car as he was driving with his family, the official said.



Basra, a predominantly Shiite Muslim city, has been relatively calm in recent weeks, though insurgents fired four mortar rounds Sunday at schools slated to serve as polling centers.



In Baghdad on Monday, masked gunmen shot dead another candidate, Shaker Jabbar Sahla, a Shiite Muslim who was running in the National Assembly election for the Constitutional Monarchy Movement. The party is headed by Sharif Ali bin Hussein, a cousin of Iraq’s last king.

Democracy is on the march!! Of course it's a peculiar, rigged, particularly violent Bush-style democracy, but what the hell...you can't have everything. You go with the democracy you have, not the one you want, right?