From today's New York Times:

President Bush acknowledged Monday that the United States had achieved only "mixed" success in training Iraqi troops to secure the country, and said that it was "unacceptable" that some Iraqi units had fled as soon as they faced hostile fire. With the first elections in Iraq six weeks away, Mr. Bush's public criticism of how the Iraqis had performed reflected mounting concern, voiced from the White House, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, that the strategy for training 125,000 Iraqi forces to secure the country is failing.

Without its own forces at the polls, the experience of your average Iraqi will be one of going to a US run polling booth. If Alawi's government is elected to continue, it will have the look of a cooked event to that voter. If the mullahs are elected, it will feel like a snubbing of the US to that voter. If there is a concerted set of attacks on polling day, it will look like a mess. In any event, it will not have the feel of a legitimate autonomous process run by Iraqis.