Exerpts of CNN chief correspondent Michael Ware report from Baghdad:

Ayad Allawi has been a stalwart for American support all through the ’90s and since the invasion. Indeed, he’s arguably America’s closest political ally.

He’s saying that the system, the government, the institutions that have been implanted here are not working.

Now, that’s an assessment that we now know is shared by some very senior generals here on the ground in Iraq — that’s American generals
Then last year, in the summer, I interviewed Dr. Allawi..He was saying the system was failing.

Dr. Allawi told me that the response from the administration was not a yes, but it was not a no. And now we’re hearing generals saying that maybe democracy is not working.

Dr. Allawi certainly is shaping himself as one of the key candidates.
Dr. Allawi has appealed to the Baathists and to the Sunnis and to secular moderates within the country and some Shia, all of whom were essentially abandoned by American support during elections, while Iranian-backed parties were flooded with money and Iranian support.

But Iraqi innocents are still dying in their hundreds and thousands every month. And what we’re failing to address is how we achieving these successes in bringing down the violence is by cutting a deal with the tribes, the Baathists and the Sunni insurgents. It’s by creating Sunni militias to counteract the government’s own militias and the Iranian-backed militias.
Ambassador Crocker, just the other day, say that if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki does not deliver, then American support is not at the end of a blank check. So he’s threatening the prime minister.