Mashhadani's behavior was as wild as his rhetoric. On his second day as speaker last year, his bodyguards got in a brawl involving a female Shiite legislator, a member of Moqtada Sadr's party. Her cell phone rang -- twice -- with a Shiite prayer in the lobby of the parliament as Mashhadani was doing a TV interview nearby. The speaker's bodyguards beat up one of the legislator's aides, and she joined in the melee. When she complained the next day on the floor of parliament, Mashhadani shut down the session.

It wouldn't be the last time that Mashhadani would either purposefully or inadvertently close the chamber.

Last month, he caused a massive walkout after he strangely began laughing during a discussion about a report on some Iraqi refugees. When a member challenged him on this odd behavior, he said: "The magnitude of the tragedy is making me laugh. Three quarters of the deputies are responsible for [sectarian] cleansing and killings."

As outraged legislators exited the chamber, a fellow Sunni upbraided the speaker. "Shut up, you scum," Mashhadani said as he slapped the man on the face.

This month, Mashhadani's bodyguards reportedly liberated a Shiite lawmaker from half his clothing after he passed too closely to the speaker in a corridor.

After this incident, 168 members of the 275-member Iraqi parliament met in a closed session on June 10 with a majority of those present (113) reportedly voting to oust Mashhadani as speaker and appoint his Shiite deputy as interim speaker. Mashhadani refused to relinquish his position, however, and on June 24, the two Sunni blocs in parliament, which control 55 seats, announced they were boycotting until Mashhadani is restored.

Their attitude seems to be: He may be a lunatic, but he is our lunatic.

Meanwhile, the 30-seat bloc controlled by Shiite sheik and warlord Moqtada Sadr is boycotting parliament to protest the recent destruction of the minarets at the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

All this should matter a great deal to Americans for this reason: The surge strategy that is now taking an escalating number of U.S. lives was aimed at giving Mashhadani's and Sadr's parliament a chance to pass reforms it was hoped would reconcile Sunnis and Shiites.