Preliminary results of the parliamentary elections in Iraq indicate the ”Shiite alliance has taken a commanding lead,” said the English-language Kayhan International in its editorial on Thursday. The results, although not yet officially confirmed, spell disaster for Washington, which had supported the secular party led by former prime minsiter Iyad Allawi. Candidates backed by Shiite and Sunni religious groups under the United Iraqi Alliance endorsed by Iraq`s most prominent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, are ”likely to win the two-thirds majority needed to avoid a coalition with other parties,” pointed out the daily. The victory of Islamists in Iraq`s elections only confirms a dreaded fear of the US: that people in the region prefer a religious form of democracy in contrast to the American secularist version, it suggested. ”The recent polls in Iraq are a further proof that whenever elections are held in Islamic countries, it is the Islamists that will always sweep to victory, which means a collapse of U.S. credibility among nations of the Middle East, whose leaders would probably distance themselves from Washington.” Washington has prided itself in the fact that voter turn-out in the elections was high and violent incidents minimal. However, the fact is that violence is increasing by the day in Iraq while Bush`s popularity at home is sinking as shown by results of a new survey in the US. What does this mean for Americans? For them, it means the war was the biggest mistake and America should now hurry to get out from the quagmire it has sunk into while it still can. According to a new poll, ”35% of Americans...think the U.S. is now back in Vietnam, things in Iraq are just getting worse and worse for the Bush Administration, leaving its trustrated troops no other option but to enter the terrain of withdrawal,” pointed out the daily. ”Washington will never be able to impose an imported American version of democracy in Iraq. The current Islamist movement in Iraq in particular and those happening in other countries in the Middle East in general, are on the right track,” concluded the daily.