Derb, I read that Chalabi editorial in the Journal too. I think they are right that the raid against Chalabi was a mistake—it was a very clumsy way to distance ourselves from him. If we no longer trust him, it would have been much better to cut him off quietly and leave it at that. Ultimately, however, despite all the vitriol from both sides of the Chalabi debate, I just don’t think he matters much. He apparently has very little political support in Iraq, and if we are going to make Iraq into any sort of democracy, being popular is going to be necessary to political leadership. Now, perhaps with his newly minted demagogic anti-U.S. rhetoric (“let my people go!”) Chalabi will be able to get some of the political support he has heretofore lacked. A word on Brahimi. If I remember correctly—the political process has had so many twists and turns it’s hard to keep it straight—I believe we tapped Brahimi in the first place because Sistani wanted someone from the UN, not just us, to certify that elections wouldn’t be possible until January. I don’t like Brahimi much either. But this is how shrewd international politics should work—you use someone who says things you don’t like and whose politics you don’t share to achieve your goals. In this case, our goal is to set up a somewhat legitimate interim government on June 30th. If Brahimi can help us do that by making the whole process seem less under the control of the U.S., I don’t care what he says about Israel. We, of course, have to watch the selections to the interim government very closely, but I haven’t seen anything in the press that makes me believe the interim government is going to be controlled by Sunni strongmen, as Chalabi’s heavy-breathing supporters sometimes suggest. Again, if Chalabi is the great democratic savior of Iraq as his boosters maintain, he can prove it at the ballot box in January.