Threefer

Mike Yon reflects on a year that included three elections in Iraq.

By the way, if you've never read Yon's report on the January elections in Iraq, you owe it to yourself. It's a classic, and includes this tale of his visit to a polling place with a CNN crew:

The CNN crew had only three people, including the correspondent. They were to be dropped off and left at the polling station. I stayed with them...

An hour passed while voters stretched out in a line perhaps thirty yards long. A second hour passed, and the line remained steady. No bombs, no RPG attacks...

Three police officers handcuffed a large man. They escorted him with great purpose to an abandoned room of the school. I approached to see what was happening. Did he have a bomb?

The policemen, who had been asking me to photograph them for the last hour or two, suddenly told me to stop taking pictures. Naturally, this caused me to pick up the camera and take pictures.

"What did this man do?" I asked an Iraqi official.
"He was, let's say, misbehaving."
Misbehaving? I hadn’t heard any bombs or gunfire at the polling station (not in the polling station, anyway), nor any commotion. What had he done? The official would not tell me.
"Is he a terrorist?" I asked.
"No."
"Is he a criminal?"
"Not exactly."
"Why did you arrest him?"
"Not important, really not important."
"You have arrested a man who came to vote. This is very important. Why have you arrested him?"
Finally, the official embarrassingly explained that the man had grabbed the backside of the woman producer for CNN.