Hey--Iraqi elections, remember those? This
Juan Cole bit seems to confirm my suspicions that all the talk about Allawi's Sunni supporters--or, really, any Allawi supporters--was fabricated bullshit. Laying the groundwork for a little hocus-pocus, perhaps?
One thing seems pretty clear at this point: Iyad Allawi is highly unlikely to be prime minister. His people were putting around rumors that a lot of Sunnis would vote for him, or that the Shiites of the south had turned against the fundamentalist Shiite UIA. The early returns aren't showing either allegation to have been true. As for Ahmad Chalabi, his Iraqi National Accord seems to have sunk without a trace as far as early leaked returns are showing. These "secular" candidates with close ties to the US CIA and Pentagon just are not very popular in Iraq, except among a thin sliver of the urban middle classes to whom US officials and journalists are most likely to talk.
The results he describes in his post today (12-17, worth a read) seem more in line with what you'd think would happen. But give "them" a couple weeks to tweak the results, while attention is elsewhere, then we'll see....