lifted from a comment
by anna missed
So by early next week Ahmad Chalabi will have finished his (pre) victory lap in front of the Cheney Administration, including an audience with Big Dick himself, side kick Rumsfeld, angeneiux Condi, and "Igor" Hadley.
Sure, he’s under FBI investigation, and a barrage of criticism for the pre-war intelligence, but reports of his (fawning) reception at the Council on Foreign Relations, showed a man confident enough to be standing in a rowboat, with a powdered (& perfectly unmussed) wig crossing a Delaware River full of political ice floes.
The man is tenacious if nothing else, and those in Washington must in some ways watch in envy at such an operator, a risk taker, back slapper and back stabber — an ultimate interlocutor and juggler — who manages to make all happy (enough). Which is why he’s here in the first place, to get the job done in Iraq.
Not unlike the Juan Cole(/Billmon) theory about how the Zarqawi (myth/entity) is useful to all interests, Chalabi can also be seen through this prism of utility.
The US would like to disengage militarily, while preserving some vestiges of victory. On several fronts the Cheney administration can claim success if it throws its full weight behind Chalabi.
Chalaibi, is now the oil minister, and has had some reputed effect in protecting the oil infrastructure from sabotage. And while rhetorically anti-Syrian (anti-Baath) he seems to have laid the groundwork for an Iraqi / Mediterranean pipeline project, which could placate Syrian hostility (toward Iraq) and greatly benefit potential export.
He has, also with typical duplicity, simultaneously called for Iraqi oil wealth to remain in the hands of the Iraqi population, while at the same time being a strong advocate for privatization of those same Iraqi assets.
The other issue which the administration would dearly like to avoid, is having Iraq fall into the hands of the non-secular forces, that would in any way cast all their blood and treasure into the service of a (Iranian) mullah bound theocracy. Here too Chalabi has made some interesting maneuvers.
Much of the credibility he has gained from the Sistani perspective is based upon the US raid on his compound during the Bremer days — from which he was able to claim that he was not in the pocket of the US, but was (through his Iranian linkage) looking out for Iraqi interests first. So he tied his influence and new found populist image to the Shiite ticket and managed to win deputy vice-president, which has now morphed into the powerful oil-minister position.
Recently, Chalabi has broken with the non-secular Shiite alliance, and has established his own secular Shiite list. This would from the neo-con perspective, resolve the remaining overt face problems at issue — a secular majority candidate sworn to privatization, with cards to deal out to both Iran and Syria. And if he could just his hands on some Diebold machines we’d have a real democracy in action.