Bollettino

Chalabi has made his maiden speech. Supposedly he views himself as another Charles DeGaulle, leading the Free French into Paris. That is, if DeGaulle were willing to sell Paris to Walt Disney, and settle for a constitution written by George Patton.

The Independent carries a story about Chalabi's "I have returned" moment:

"The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has reportedly proposed to President George Bush that an interim Iraqi authority composed of exiled leaders should be installed quickly in the southern part of the country, partly to deflect international criticism that the US wishes to remain in control of Iraq indefinitely.

But in an interview, Mr Chalabi said he believed that US forces would need to remain in Iraq for at least two years before the situation was sufficiently stable for an Iraqi security force to police the country. He said it was essential that fair elections were held and that a democratic government was elected before the US forces pulled out.

"I'm not prepared to give a time frame. But we expect to have a constitution ratified within two years," he said in the interview last Thursday at a fortified complex in the Kurdish-controlled mountains of north-eastern Iraq before he flew to Nasiriyah."

A thumbsucker in the Globe includes, as does every story about Chalabi, the always interesting information that Chalabi is wanted in Jordan for fraud. The fraud charge is considered tres declasse by Chalabi's supporters, who always raise a stink when it is mentioned in, say, Congress. The Globe contains at least one hilarious graf illustrating Chalabi's brilliance:

"MIT-educated economist, Chalabi impresses friends and foes alike with his keen grasp of Iraqi and Islamic history. A London-based consultant recalled how the dissident once launched into a vivid dinnertime narrative of the seventh-century battle in which an army of the caliphate massacred a small band of revolutionaries led by Husayn, the son of the Prophet Mohammed's nephew. ''Chalabi is a secular Muslim, but he was as emotional as a cleric,'' the consultant said."

A keen grasp, eh? The story of Husayn's martyrdom is as obscure to Shi'a as, say, the story of the birth of Jesus is to Iowa Lutherans.

We have come to the endgame in this phase of the War. The real struggle, right now (the one, that is, without those pesky Iraqi civilian casualties piling up in the streets -- which figure neither in the calculus of meat machine Saddam, far gone in his pataphysical phase, nor the American press, which has lavished more ink on the rescue of one American POW than on all the crushed bodies of Iraq combined), is between the State Department and the Pentagon -- and the Pentagon's implantation of Chalabi is obviously a pre-emptive strike. Arab Gateway's Iraqi opposition site features a handy scorecard of all your favorite Iraqi revolutionary groups. Make your bets today!