Which is the most embarrassing element of the Chalabi situation?
1. That we’ve been paying Chalabi to tell us lies.
2. That Chalabi duped us by spreading the same false intelligence he was peddling to us to foreign intelligence agencies, whose reports when appeared as “confirmation” of his original fabrications.
3. That the original source of the fabrications may turn out to have been the Iranian intelligence service, using Chalabi to induce the U.S. to invade Iraq.
4. That, in return for the disinformation the Iranians were feeding us through him, Chalabi was passing genuine American secrets to Iranian intelligence.
5. That no one in Washington seems to have been authorized to give Chalabi or his crew that sensitive information, raising the specter of possible Espionage Act prosecutions.
6. That Chalabi managed to get himself seated right behind the First Lady for the State of the Union in January.
7. That a number of prominent American neocons have decided to support Chalabi against their own government, using in some cases strikingly anti-American language.
8. That the raid enraged Chalabi against the United States without reducing his ability to damage us.
9. That, after U.S. and CPA officials attributed the raid on Chalabi’s house and party headquarters to Iraqis, the Iraqi Interim Governing Council denounced it.
10. That, despite the presence of 100 U.S. soldiers at the raid, the Secretary of Defense denied any advance knowledge of it.