Watch the Kurds

Juan Cole says the early take away from Iraq's election was that parties backing a strong central government, and a unified Iraqi state, won. If Cole is correct, and the centralizers won the day, what does this mean for Kurdish ambitions?

(I think the mere fact that both Cole and the Nation's Robert Dreyfuss have not waxed overly pessimistic about the elections says something encouraging about the state of affairs in Iraq as neither can be accused of being boosters of the effort.)