The Iraqi Transitional Government, which replaced the Iraqi Interim Government on May 3, 2005, “suffered from the same set of problems that afflicted the Interim Government, and it ended up committing the same mistakes–but for different reasons and purposes. In one important respect, though, it had an advantage over the Interim Government. It was not an appointed but an elected government which, despite the widespread Sunni Arab boycott, could still claim a democratic legitimacy that the Interim Government had lacked.”
– Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, Pages 400-401