ufw status and iptables

I tried to document a method that I thought would allow a new sysadmin to test the new firewall without getting locked up. However, when I look at the iptables rules, I don't get the result I expected:
On a new system, there are absolutely no rules:

Code:
# iptables -L -n -v
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 2793K packets, 569M bytes)
pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 1768K packets, 5488M bytes)
pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination
Enable ufw:

Code:
ufw enable
then check the output of iptables again (same command as above): this time we have a loooooong list of rules, those enabled by default by ufw.

Disable ufw:

Code:
ufw disable
I kind of expected at this time for the iptable rules to be back to the empty set we had at the beginning. However, we still have all the rules that were added when we first enabled ufw.

What does this imply? Do those rules apply? Is there an effective firewall?
Is my logic somehow faulty in the 'Setting up your first firewall' section of the wiki ??
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1967744