Ahmed Chalabi, Putchist. posted by Richard Seymour

Counterpunch has what they call a scoop , and for a muck-raking magazine they have a smasher:

In dawn raids today, American troops surrounded Ahmed Chalabi's headquarters and home in Baghdad, put a gun to his head, arrested two of his aides, and seized documents. Only five months ago, Chalabi was a guest of honor sitting right behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union. What brought about this astonishing fall from grace of the man who helped provide the faked intelligence that justified last year's war?

According to Andrew Cockburn, yer man Chalabi was forming a band of Shi'ites around him to destabilise a Brahimi government. He had told them that Brahimi's government was part of a Sunni conspiracy, and now was the time to resist. He's got the Iraqi Hebollah behind him, a part of the Dawa Party and Ayatollah Mohammed Bahr al Uloom... Apparently, he's looking to take over when Muqtada al-Sadr gets killed:

"Sooner rather than later," the Iraqi observer, a close student of Shia politics, points out, "Moqtada al Sadr is going to be killed. That willl leave tens, hundreds of thousands of his supporters looking for a new leader. If Ahmed plays the role of victim, he can take on that role. His dream has always been to be a sectarian Shia leader."

Given the imminence of the announcement of the post June 30 arrrangement, the stakes are very high for the US. The occupation command in Baghdad well understands that Chalabi has the resources and skills to wreck the all-important arrangements for the official handover of power. "People realise that Ahmed is a gambler, prepared to bring it all down," I was told today, "and this raid may not be at all to his detriment."

US disenchantment with the man who has received $27 million of taxpeyers' money in recent years has been gathering pace in recent months. "You can piss on Chalabi" President Bush remarked to Jordan's King Abdullah some months ago. "Ahmed is on good terms with many people," a senior Iraqi politician told me waspishly, "and on bad terms with a great many more."

Is this the most bizarre fucking thing you've heard all year? Excuse me, but this is one "uprising" I want no part of...