Now that we’ve gotten most of the invasion done with, it’s time to get down to the real battle: whether or not to install Ahmed Chalabi as the next king of Iraq.
As you’ve probably heard, a couple days ago the Pentagon airlifted Chalabi and a slew of his troops into southern Iraq for purposes 
which weren’t entirely spelled out. Pentagon critics assumed it was to give Chalabi a leg up on other oppositionists.
The striking thing was that this didn’t just seem like a surprise to the press, but also to much of the US government. Here’s some more interesting reporting from UPI about an internal government report the CIA circulated last week detailing their arguments against Chalabi’s suitability to be the “Iraqi Karzai.”
The weird thing about Chalabi is that — whatever you think of him — he has a way of getting different arms of the US government fighting against each other. As a sympathetic Washington-based Arab journalist told me last year, “The problem with those guys [i.e., the hawks] is they’re so fascinated by Ahmed. They want to wind a policy around Ahmed. Find a policy. And let’s see where Ahmed fits in it. And at the same time, you have the State department, the opposite side, they want to make a policy but make sure he’s not involved in it.”
