What's Allawi's WQ?

Yep, I missed some big stories in the last four days. Uncooperative Internet connection, which is really getting tiresome at this point.

So newshounds are already totally on top of this, but I couldn't resist bringing it up for the sheer "WHA!?!? Quotient" of the whole thing. And yes, I just made that up. But I'll probably re-use it.

Christina Davidson at IraqSlogger, who broke the story that influential GOP lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers are promoting Iraqi parliamentarian Ayad Allawi to be the new prime minister, has another scoop. On Monday, BGR president Robert Blackwill -- President Bush's former Iraq coordinator at the White House -- signed a contract with Allawi worth $300,000 over six months to provide "strategic counsel" for the would-be-premier "before the US Government, Congress, media and others."

You might remember Allawi as BushCo's (initial) hand-picked choice for the job of Iraq's prime minister. That didn't work out too well because he was an international fugitive, embezzler, suspected double agent, and generally reviled by everyone outside neo-con circles.

He's a known criminal, he stole hundreds of millions of dollars from us, and he's in the running for reinstatement. That puts Allawi's WQ in a pretty high percentile.

UPDATE: More. Much more. Craig has a long history of this sort of thing. And he was Romney's campaign co-chair in Idaho. Is this the fifth or the sixth state-level campaign official that's resigned on the GOP side? See it all here.