Iran Stuffing Ballots, Or Are They?

I'll report, and you decide. The NYT and other outlets are reporting that a tanker truck was stopped at the Iraqi border with Iran and searched. It was then discovered that the tanker was filled with thousands of ballots for the ongoing Iraqi elections.

Confederate Yankee (and crossposted to Newsbusters, is reporting that the Times may have been taken for a ride - that the Iraqi forces in charge of border control said that no such event took place. Per Reuters:

The head of Iraq's border guards denied police reports on Wednesday that a tanker truck stuffed with thousands of forged ballot papers had been seized crossing into Iraq from Iran before Thursday's elections. "This is all a lie," said Lieutenant General Ahmed al-Khafaji, the chief of the U.S.-trained force which has responsibility for all Iraq's borders. "I heard this yesterday and I checked all the border crossings right away. The borders are all closed anyway," he told Reuters.

Curious. It is still possible that the Iranians did try to get ballot stuffing into Iraq, but the question is why bother doing it the hard way. Getting the dead to vote early and often is so much easier. Just ask Chicago Democrats. Or New Jersey bureaucrats who never bothered to clear the voter rolls of thousands of dead voters.

UPDATE:
Count on Point Five to get to the bottom of the situation.

UPDATE:
This story is beginning to get wider attention. AJ Strata, All Things Beautiful, Stop the ACLU, and Right Wing Nuthouse all weigh in.

UPDATE 12/15/2005:
Michael Ledeen, who cannot be excused as a White House flack or an Iran apologist, thinks that there might be fire behind the smoke of the original story. Iran definitely wants to affect the outcome of the election, so the question becomes that if Iran did try to push phony ballots into Iraq, what should be the appropriate response. And that's a far tougher question to address.