At TPMmuckraker today we've been explaining the 'boomlet', if that's the word for a manufactured boomlet, to return longtime CIA asset Iyad Allawi to power in Iraq as the successor to Prime Minister Maliki. He's signed on a big ticket GOP lobbying firm to make his case, Barbour Griffith & Rogers. And his account at BGR is being handled by Robert Blackwill, who until recently was the Iraq coordinator at the White House. So he probably gets his calls returned.

But here's something else that'll probably come in handy. The Iraqi National Intelligence Service turns out not to be funded by the Iraqi national government but rather by the Central Intelligence Agency. Go figure.

And the INIS, in turn, is run by Allawi's longtime pal Hazem Shaalan.

I confess that I have a much greater tolerance for these sorts of creative approaches to national sovereignty and democratic change when I have any confidence the puppeteers have a clue what they're doing. But, that said, it would seem Mr. Allawi may be the coming man to continue Iraq's democratic revolution.