UK Telegraph: "An arrest warrant has been issued for Ahmed Chalabi's right-hand man in Baghdad, the American consultant Francis Brooke, who tried to stop the recent raid on the politician's headquarters in the Iraqi capital. Ahmed Chalabi In the latest in a series of damaging blows for Mr Chalabi, an Iraqi judge said that Mr Brooke had obstructed the Iraqi police...'He stopped the raid by telling the police they didn't have the legal power to do it because he was an American and they were Iraqis,' said Judge Zuhair Al-Maliky, of the central criminal court in Baghdad. ' As a result, the raid didn't go as planned.' "

This week, the Bush admin made a great show of "cutting Chalabi off", raiding his office, and claiming he had "given away secrets" to Iran that could "endanger US troops." But the real story, suppressed completely by US media, may be the Iraq-to-Iran pipeline deal that the Iraq oil ministry set in motion in March, the final deal to have been finalized around June 1 (what a coincidence - that's just a few weeks off!). As this March 1 BBC story reports: " 'I can say with confidence the pipeline will be established by the end of the year,'[the Iraqi oil minister] told the Financial Times. Meanwhile, coalition officials confirmed that a 'memorandum of understanding' had been reached between the former enemies. This is even though US president George W Bush strained relations between Washington and Tehran after he declared Iran part of an 'axis of evil'. " We'd LOVE to know what's really going on regarding Chalabi, the Bush cartel, Iran and Iraqi oil.

Stored at Ahmad Chalabi's office is a wealth of information on Saddam's oil ministry - including, we assume, its dealings with any western corporations. Now this week, less than 48 hours after the Bush junta made a big show of cutting off Chalabi's $335,000/mo "intelligence" stipend, US soldiers and police raided Chalabi's office, purportedly to obtain info for the investigation of the oil-for-food program. A big show was made of holding a gun on Chalabi and "bullying" him. US officials in Iraq accuse Chalabi of interfering with the investigation (i.e., refusing to go along with the US version of an "investigation"). But is the real problem Chalabi's refusal to turn over his trump card - the evidence of US corporate involvement in the fraud?

"Faced with a storm of attacks and uncertainty over its future role in Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress and its controversial leader Ahmed Chalabi are lashing back at their critics in America. Chalabi's exile group-turned-political party issued a statement Monday denouncing what it described as 'a CIA-orchestrated smear campaign,' after Newsweek published allegations that the group had provided sensitive information to Iran that may endanger the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq...In a sign the group might be losing support among neoconservative advocates, Jerusalem based attorney Marc Zell branded Chalabi 'a treacherous, spineless turncoat'..Zell, a former partner of Douglas Feith, said Chalabi had failed on prewar promises to end Iraq's boycott of Israel among other promises."