I some way maybe it had it's benefit to have the religious nuts in charge of Iraq that early after the war. Their complete failure disaffected many Iraqis and might turn more of them to the nonsectarian parties alá Allawi.
SolidWood, the problem with that is that the US allowed the Iraqi government to control the Iraqi Electoral Process and it allowed them to count the votes by themselves. The IEC was nothing but a Sadr/Hakim controlled farce. The Iraqi people actually were mad at the UIA coming into the December 2005 election.
Because, the US was so afraid of being viewed as rigging the election, we put the election in the hands of people who would rig the election. And, in the second Iraqi election they did rig the vote big time. Omar at ITM covered this quite a bit at the time. There were villages in southern Iraq were Allawi went from 2000 votes to 200 votes. And, there were areas were the UIA pulled more votes then voters regestered.