Don’t be so damn snarky.

I have no idea if Chalabi is guilty of the charges against him or not. He may well have played both against the middle, happens all the time. I think there is a lot of jockying for power going in Iraq right now and it might be a long time before we know the truth. I hear he is actually more popular now because he is seen as a victim. Who knows?

But one thing is for sure, if it had been left up to the lying lefties [which you referred to] there would have been no investigation of the food for oil scandal in the first damn place. People in Iraq would still be getting rotten food and watered down medicine and France would still be swapping security councel votes for oil deals and Chalabi would still be working with the CIA just like he did before Bush and the neocons ever came to Washington and you would not give a goddam one way or the other.

Speaking at a news conference near the panel’s temporary offices next to the United Nations, Mr. Volcker said his staff of 50, more than half of them American, has already identified and gained access to about 15 million pages of United Nations records of the program in Baghdad and New York. The panel has also interviewed witnesses and law enforcement authorities in several countries and is opening offices in Baghdad, New York and Paris.

. . . Mr. Volcker said his panel had not yet received the original list of oil vouchers supposedly awarded to diplomats and United Nations officials, which was published by an Iraqi newspaper several months ago.

Well, well, well, who’s not being “transparent” now? Kind of curious, when you realize that that the easiest way to force things into the open would be for Al-Mada (the Iraqi paper) to duplicate the list and distribute it to everyone in the world. You know, kind of like the Taguba report into the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

But then, who could have guessed that the Al-Mada list would be so elusive? Oh, yeah, I did, three months ago. And a month before that, I warned that the the Chalabi-centric nature of the controversy made it suspect.

But since I’m just a lying lefty troll who doesn’t have Roger’s eagle eye for the truth, I guess I must have just gotten lucky.

(Hey, Roger, if you get a chance — did that backup CD of Claude Hankes-Drielsma’s ever turn up? You know, the one that you said Claudia Rosett confirmed he had? Sure would be awkward if that turned out not to be so, wouldn’t it? “As they say in court, if a witness lies about one thing…”)