Hi Jason,
I have yet to find a good way to pull event data from the AIP module. However, you can, as you mentioned, setup a read-only user on the module and retrieve event data from a single sensor using IDM, or from multiple sensors with IME.
To access IDM, you can simply browse to https://. Here is the reference for viewing events in IDM:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/ips/6.2/configuration/guide/idm/idm_monitoring.html#wp1124764
IME is a free download from Cisco.com.
Hope that helps.
-Mike