"To hell with all those who get killed. Be strong," advised Iyad Allawi as he unleashed 20,000 troops on Fallujah. To those who know him, this comment came as no surprise. "He's a pragmatist. He knows that in order to rule Iraq, you have to kill people," explains former CIA agent Bob Bauer. But Allawi was quick to deny reports that he had personally shot six prisoners prior to the handover of power in Iraq. Allawi first emerged as one of Saddam's spies in London in the late 70s. As a high ranking Ba'athist official, he "was part of a machine which did monstrous things." He is believed to have colluded in or sanctioned the murders of Saddam's political rivals before switching sides in the early 80s and working against Hussein. He set up the Iraqi National Accord (INA) which provided some of the bogus intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Prior to this, the main achievement of the INA was the bombing of a series of public buildings in Baghdad which left up to a hundred dead. Now, he's widely tipped to retain his position as ruler of Iraq after next January's elections. But former colleague, Dr Haifa Azawi, has serious concerns about the nature of any Allawi government. "Iyad Allawi will have another Saddam style government in Iraq. He's so power hungry.