Millions of Iraqis voted for a new Parliament on Wednesday, defying threats from Islamist extremists, in an election that was carried out, by Iraq’s brutal standards, in remarkable peace. After a surge in violence leading up to the vote, and threats by a Sunni extremist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, to strike polling sites, no attacks were reported in Baghdad, and none with any large numbers of casualties were reported elsewhere in the country. The election, the first nationwide vote since the departure of American troops more than two years ago, was seen as a referendum on Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ’s eight years as prime minister as he seeks a third term amid a growing Sunni insurgency that has brought the country to the edge of a new civil war. But with results pending, the story on Wednesday was simply that the […]