"Former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi's hopes of taking significant numbers of votes from Iraq's religious parties in last week's election appeared to suffer a major blow last night." And this `Allawi, who did not mind US/UK intervention on his behalf in the last election--and in this I am certain, is now blaming his defeat on the incidents where opponents took down his posters. How dare they? My money paid for his campaign and for these posters, and I want answers. And apparently, what contributed (yet again) to `Allawi's defeat (despite US/Saudi support--Saudi media ran an unending supply of pro-`Allawi propaganda) was among other factors were: 1) his unpopularity; 2) his image as a puppet/car bomber/former Saddam's henchman/embezzler-in-Yemen; 3) the fact that he offered a bizarre promise--or what was perceived to be a bizarre promise--to bring back Saddam's Ba`thists to power if elected.