IRAQ: DEMOCRACY!

Time: How Much U.S. Help?
The Bush Administration takes heat for a CIA plan to influence Iraq's elections

President Bush and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted last week that Iraq would go ahead with elections scheduled for January, despite continuing violence. But U.S. officials tell TIME that the Bush team ran into trouble with another plan involving those elections — a secret "finding" written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favored by Washington. A source says the idea was to help such candidates but not necessarily to go so far as to rig the elections.