The New York Times magazine this morning features a
long article
Where Plan A Left Ahmad Chalabi by Dexter Filkins. It is one more item that will be forgotten in a week and yet be cited in doctoral dissertations fifty years hence, full of comments by Perle and Wolfowitz asserting their justifications du jour for the utter disaster they - with Chalabi - have visited on the American people. [As an aside, there is a 'precious' vignette about a visit with Chalabi to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Teheran to view the Picassos and Rothkos and
Chagalls!]
One of the 'money' passages, to my mind, is the following comment on the most recent parliamentary elections, in which Chalabi opted to decline inclusion in the Shiite slate in order to field his own:
When the election came, Chalabi was wiped out. His Iraqi National Congress received slightly more than 30,000 votes, only one-quarter of 1 percent of the 12 million votes cast -- not enough to put even one of them, not even Chalabi, in the new Iraqi Parliament. There was grumbling in the Chalabi camp. One of his associates said of the Shiite alliance: "We know they cheated. You know how we know? Because in one area we had 5,000 forged ballots, and when they were counted, we didn't even get that many." He shrugged.
Somehow this seems especially appropriate to this particular weekend in the U.S., don't you agree?
The article represents what the NYTMag is meant for, an hour of Sunday afternoon diversion. It's worth reading - on that basis.