Just as Chalabi did, Allawi, in his quiet way, supplied the requisite quota of misinformation on Saddam's WMD to justify the Bush-Blair war program. The infamous lie about Saddam's ability to deploy biological weapons in 45 minutes that Blair put out in his dossier came from Allawi's organization.

When Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer handed out patronage rewards to the motley group of expatriates assembled in the Governing Council last year, Allawi secured the important plum of chairmanship of the Defense and Security Committee. His nominee became minister of the interior (though there were some awkward questions asked when 19 billion dinars of ministry money mysteriously turned up in a private plane at Beirut airport, unencumbered by a satisfactory explanation as to what it was doing there.) Thus Allawi is well placed in the "power ministries" with oversight of the nascent military and police. (Ali Allawi, the current minister of defense, is a cousin of Iyad's, as well as being Ahmed's nephew, but is generally considered to be his own man.)

Behind the scenes, Allawi and Chalabi have been waging a ferocious struggle for the spoils of power, particularly in the oil sector. Although Chalabi was able to get control of key posts at the powerful ministry of oil, Allawi scored a significant victory when his nominee managed to secure the agency for the oil trading giant Glencore, which had formerly been on close terms with Chalabi. In response, the Chalabi forces swore to ensure that Glencore could not buy Iraqi oil, an embargo that may change now that Iyad Allawi is becoming prime minister.

In recent days, Allawi and Chalabi joined forces, along with other former expatriate politicians, to prevent the nomination of Hussein Shahristani to the post of prime minister. Shahristani, a devout Shiite, would have been an inspired appointment. A man of extraordinary courage and integrity, he once told Saddam Hussein to his face that Iraq should not build a nuclear weapon. Predictably, he was tortured and put on trial for espionage, in the course of which he blithely insulted Saddam's parentage. He spent 10 years in solitary confinement in Abu Ghraib. "I probably survived execution because I was there on the direct orders of Saddam," Shahristani once told me. "And he simply forgot to sign my death warrant." He escaped disguised as a prison guard during the 1991 war after suborning a trusty who unlocked his cell and helped him flee.

Finding refuge in Iran, Shahristani refused to move on to comfortable exile in the West, preferring instead to stay in Iran and organize aid for otherwise friendless Iraqi refugees as well as the resistance inside Iraq itself. His unshakable independence eventually drove the Iranians to force him to move to London.

Returning to Iraq immediately after the war, Shahristani eschewed the trappings of power and cash rewards sought by other returning exiles and even refused to enter the U.S. Green Zone headquarters on the grounds it was occupied territory. He soon earned the trust and respect of Ayatollah Sistani. But that was not enough to protect him from self-interested intriguers like Allawi, Chalabi, and the representatives of the Islamist parties SCIRI and DAWA. "The Islamist Shia said they wouldn't take someone who wasn't one of them, which Shahristani is not, and the secular Shia said they wouldn't have someone who is religious, meaning Shahristani," explains a despondent Iraqi official and Shahristani supporter.

The United Nations, charged with coming up with the new government, was taken by surprise by Allawi's selection. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he "respects" the decision and is willing to work with Allawi, according to U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. But the world body was less than effusive about the choice. "Let's see what the Iraqi street has to say about this name before we decide to write it off," Eckhard said. Brahimi, who is not permitted to leave the U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, has previously confided to friends that he feels immense pressure from the U.S. to endorse its choice.

Having settled on a prime minister, National Security Council aide Robert Blackwill, who has the Iraq portfolio, and Brahimi will soon announce the Iraqi president. As of Friday evening, the hot favorite was a senior member of the powerful Shammar tribe named Ghazi al Yawar, who is distantly related to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and who has spent many years in Saudi Arabia. However, the former favorite, courtly octogenarian Adnan Pachachi, who sat beside Laura Bush in her box at the State of the Union address, is reported to have edged back into the running and may still stand a chance. No one is asking the Iraqi people who they want, at least not yet.

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