Ayad Allawi, Iraq's Next Prime Minister .... Maybe

Ayad Allawi spoke of being viciously attacked in his bedroom in 1978 in London, where he was in exile after breaking with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Joao Silva for The New York Times

Iraqi Ex-Premier Looks To Past In Fighting Critics -- New York Times

BAGHDAD — Ayad Allawi has seldom spoken publicly about the night more than 30 years ago when a pair of ax-wielding assassins turned his London bedroom into an abattoir.

Now, determined to counter charges by his political enemies that he won Iraq’s national elections by appealing to Baathists, and locked in a struggle with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to assemble a government, he offered up that story in the middle of an interview on Monday.

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My Comment: It is interesting to see what is happening in Iraq today. A Shiite dominated government is using the law to ban Allawi Sunni candidates because of past Baathist connections .... even though in the past Allawi was on a Baathist death list.

If successful, this will seriously undermine the Iraqi political process, and any government that PM Maliki may cobble together. The key is for both Ayad Allawi and PM Maliki to work together .... but from what I am seeing .... this cooperation is nowhere on the horizon.