Look what just crawled out from under an Iraqi rock

Remember this? Well there appears to be something of a competition to see who can get to the finish line first.

Escalating a political crisis that has paralyzed the Iraqi government, three secular cabinet members will formally resign Saturday, according to a senior member of the group.

The Iraqi National List, an umbrella group of several political parties composed of secular Sunnis and Shiites, had boycotted cabinet meetings since Aug. 7 because of frustrations with what they saw as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's divisive leadership style. The party, headed by former prime minister Ayad Allawi, will now submit the official resignations, National List member Iyad Jamal al-Deen said.

Allawi, just to refresh your memories, was the one whom the White House sprinkled Cheney fairy dust upon and was favoured by the Bush administration to lead the Iraqi government. In fact, they installed him as the first head of government after Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi voters saw things differently and Allawi's party lost 15 seats in the January 2005 national elections and his party only took 14 percent of the vote.

Allawi is responsible for providing the report from an "Iraqi intelligence officer" which declared that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

That turned out to be... a lie, but it figured prominently in "the dossier" produced by the Blair government in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.

Stay tuned to this guy. It could get very interesting.

H/T The Gazetteer.