ELECTIONS WITHIN A YEAR?

Iraq's U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, said Thursday that general elections could be held in Iraq within a year to replace a U.S.-appointed Governing Council whose legitimacy has been questioned by the international community...

"It is certainly not unrealistic to think that we could have elections by mid-year 2004," Bremer said while touring the partially refurbished Iraqi Foreign Ministry with members of the interim government he appointed on July 13.

"And when a sovereign government is installed, the coalition authority will cede authority to the government and my job here will be over," Bremer said.

And so too, hopefully, a whole lot of our troops.