Civil war in Iraq?

Not likely, says Mohammed.

With the elections' day getting closer, I'm hearing more voices warning of the possibility of a civil war in Iraq after the elections and I want to say that I do not find that theory the least acceptable; the theory of the civil war doesn't match any of the facts on the ground and it's based on visions of people who have never lived among Iraqis and have no real-if any-experience in the region.
The coming days will be a test for these theories but I'm almost positive that nothing like that is going to happen and so I don't need to wait to find out.

Most of such theories are based on the assumption that the Sunni will not approve the outcome of the elections if the She'at got the majority of votes and that this disapproval would take the form of a widespread insurgency in all the areas inhabited by a Sunni majority and then the She'at would be forced to fight to defend their existence and the whole country gets into an endless circle of violence.

Mohammed is right. "Experts", like the nonplussed Juan Cole, have been (and continue to be) consistently wrong about Iraq. As Mohammed points out, their "visions" derive from ignorance not experience.

Mohammed goes on to review the data with regard to the elections and eloquently argues that the results will be much more heterogeneous than a lot of people seem to believe.