[mburbank]

It's no surprise that the day after he was officially cut from the Pentagon Payroll he was publicly humiliated. This will almost certainly be followed by his arrest or convenient death.

I think theres a certain irony to this. Chalabi has been telling the neocons and their defacto President everything they wanted to hear for years. Now tht it's all turned to crap, they have to blame someone for the uncomfortable position they're in. Chalabi had made it clear over the last month that since the US was no longer planning to make him President of Iraq, the plan during retired general what-his-faces brief tour of duty between "Mission Accomplished" and Administrator Bremmer he was not going to play ball. Chalabi's credability may be shot to hell, but he still knows where a lot of bodies are buried. I think he'll be shot resisting arrest pretty soon.

Think of this as a preemptive strike by the US. Usually we wait until our puppet rulers turn violently against us before we kill or imprison them. This time we didn't even wait to install him. There's a certain logic there. Everyone we pick to be a puppet ruler turns out to be a deeplky corrupt, dangerous son of a bitch. Why wait to crush this one? The very fact that we picked him in the first place means he's dangerous to us. Thsi is the first administration move in Iraq that has my total support.