Juan Cole on the Iraqi elections

Juan Cole points out that holding the elections weren't Dubya's original plan. For the record, the neocons originally wanted to have an Ahmed Chalabi puppet state. When people did a little bit of digging and learned that he was an embezzler convicted in absentia, the plan changed to having Bremer act as a regent for a few years.

Only after mass protests did the Neocons encourage elections. Fortunately, things were relatively peaceful in the Shia areas, because they were the ones demonstrating for the elections in the first place.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter, Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly what they did.

So if it had been up to Bush, Iraq would have been a soft dictatorship under Chalabi, or would have had stage-managed elections with an electorate consisting of a handful of pro-American notables. It was Sistani and the major Shiite parties that demanded free and open elections and a UNSC resolution. They did their job and got what they wanted. But the Americans have been unable to provide them the requisite security for truly aboveboard democratic elections.

Needlenose has an excellent timeline here.