As I said, I don’t know what’s going on with the guy. But I keep getting these emails suggesting that the raid was staged. I think this is nonsense, not least because it’s appeared at Thomaspaine.com. I certainly don’t put it past the CIA to prop up someone if need be and I’m not even sure it would be a bad idea if it would work. But the story being spread everywhere is that Chalabi gave intelligence to the Iranians. If this was staged, why create that cover story? That doesn’t paint Chalabi as a great Iraqi patriot. It paints him as a traitor of a differnt color. We know that even the majority of Iraqi Shiites don’t trust the Iranians.