GLOBAL JOURNALIST: Will the election in Iraq bring stability?

Stuart Loory, Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies, Missouri School of Journalism: What does the election last weekend in Iraq mean for the future of that country and for the rest of the world? The results are not yet in, and the votes are still being counted. No matter who wins, Iraq will need a coalition government to govern effectively, and that could take months to put into place. One major party is led by the current prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has been in power since 2006. The other is led by Ayad Allawi. He is the former prime minister who was a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Each of these parties is thought to have won somewhere around 100 seats in the new 325-seat parliament. A Kurdish party may have won about 60 seats. The turnout was over 60 percent despite attempts by insurgents to prevent voting by acts of violence. Thirty-eight people were killed on the election days, and hundreds more were wounded. Some observers say this election was not all that meaningful — it was a sop to the U.S. Was it the triumph that President Barack Obama and Gen. Ray Odierno claimed, or was it less meaningful than they were saying?