Do you think Slate's Chris Hitchens might have had something to do with it? He's a big fan of Chalabi pere.

I too was rather surprised to read Tamara's piece in Slate (the other liberal white meat), and was almost bored to tears by any observations she had to offer. I have a feeling that there is no dearth of female reporters to cover the Middle East, just not many with connections. And let's face it - in a place like the Middle East, connections matter more than almost anything else.

The two paragraphs you devote to attacking Tamara's writing ability hurt the rest of your argument. Isn't it enough to point out that political connections could have helped her get her current writing gig?

That part of your article just smacks of a cheap shot; one writer builds his ego by jabbing another in the ribs. It reminds me of the negative book reviews on Amazon that are obviously written by other, perhaps less successful, authors.

Based on education and life experience, Tamara is more qualified than hundreds of other Western pundits to write on Iraq. Her connections should make readers question her conclusions, but there's nothing about her that suggests that she doesn't deserve her position.

So this is all Salon can manage to publish on the elections in Iraq? The elections for which thousands of people including two thousand Americans have shed their blood? The elections which are a gleam of hope in this benighted region?

I have to tell ya, lefties, you're starting to look like some pretty sick puppies these days. I'm no Bush fan, but he's a moral giant compared with the likes of the average "progressive" who doesn't give a tinker's damn about the people of Iraq, just like they cared nothing for the people of Southeast Asia 30 years ago.

I am deeply ashamed that I was once a fellow traveller with you people.

A 'glimmer of hope' would be a constitution not based in extremist Islamic law, a 'glimmer of hope' would be an Iraq that was not eagerly cozying up to the Holocaust-deniers in Iran, a 'glimmer of hope' would be SOME SIGN that the Kurds and Sunnis aren't only participating in this elections to expedite their drive towards secession. The myth of the 'absolute good' of democracy, any democracy, is just one of the fallacies at the heart of the intellectually feeble ideals espoused by Mr. MacDonald here. Indeed, for neocons in war supporters, all the matters is that they get a 'democracy', any 'democracy', that will help their PR efforts with the war, to hell with the RIGHTS and FREEDOMS and IDEALS that Bush should be pushing for. Throughout history, many democracies have merely served as a platform for tyranny and mob injustice. What matters is not the system, but the ideals and principles underlying the system. When naive neocons don't realize is that much of the Islamic world does not share these ideals, and as in Iran, they are more than eager to elect nationalist thugs like Ahmadinejad, just as Americans have elected their own fair share of dangerous, hubristics dopes. But no, these concerns are meaningless, progressives angry that Bush has not pushed to ensure American principles in this Iranian Islamic 'democracy' is irrelevant. As MacDonald points out in a talking point he smugly borrows from the likes of Limbaugh, progressives are just overwhelmed with one big jones for some schadenfreude. Well, Mr. MacDonald, fuck you. Fuck you, personally, and fuck your self-righteous and intellectually dishonest distortion of the views of those who disagree with you. As a progressive who, unlike the neocons, has been 100% right every step of the way about the validity of Bush's justifications for war and the ethnic hornets' nest that awaited us in Iraq, I regret to inform you that I can't promise I won't say 'I told you so' when this election yields something quite different from the sedate, liberal ally that neocons naively assume will emerge if stamped with the meaningless label of 'democracy'.

I was disappointed that your article didn't more thoroughly analyze some of the claims Chalabi is making in her column about the state of affairs in Iraq. It reads like talking points fed by the Bush administration, and she barely even mentions the US military presence.

Are we really to believe that the "lush forest of palm trees for which Basra was so famous vanished, an early victim of the Iran-Iraq war?" Is the "derelict refugee camp" of a hospital a "depressing testament to the institution's history" or to our complete failure to restore basic necessities to Iraqis after "shock and awe?" She really tows the line, like a mimic of all the messages coming out of the White House these days: elections are the solution to everything, don't mention the fact that we're absolutely bombing the $hit out of Iraq every day, and keep stressing that Iraqis truly dread "Baathists who haven't been caught and the terror they feel from them" rather than US.

Ahmad Chalabi is a famous man. Well, perhaps in some, many, circles, he is notorious. The incontrovertible truth is, like him or not, Ahmad Chalabi is a Company man.

Mr. Chalabi did what he was essentially told to do by the Bush administration, produce evidence of Iraq’s accumulation and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. When Mr. Chalabi, for a very brief moment, decided to be his own man, retaliation was swift and he faced a criminal indictment in Iraq for forgery, obstruction of justice, in short, Mr. Chalabi was going to go to prison for a very long time.

Ahmad quickly changed his tune with the Bush government and regained, “credibility,” well sort of, and was touted, once again, in the media as Iraq’s champion of the good and the right.

Now comes Tamara Chalabi, what I like to call the new Iraqi press bunny. She seemingly has decent credentials, has gone to the right schools but why then should she be singled out as she enters into the foray of journalism and the press? Why did Slate hire her? She was hired because of the buzz her name brings to the subject, Iraq, at hand.

The answer is, she is the puppet’s daughter and she is spewing out his rhetoric. What does that amount to? Simple. She is a plant, a bug of sorts, in the public relations machine extolling the virtues of the new democratized Iraq.

Tamara Chalabi is a voice for the seemingly faulty intelligence Ahmad Chalabi was told to provide to the Bush government. Intelligence which now needs to be homogenized because the American public is now waking up to certain truisms that the United States’ illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq is costing untold billions of endless dollars with no exit strategy. Bush has already laid out his blameless position for the invasion of Iraq, he first and foremost claims his decisions were based on bad intelligence provided to him.

Tamara Chalabi lacks credibility as a journalist in any matter concerning Iraqi politics, because she is at her father’s side reporting his virtues and constantly grinding the public relations wheel her father so deftly churns with the aid of the Bush administration.

If a journalist lacks objectivity, such a journalist can not, by virtue of the requirements of being a journalist, be fair or true. Tamara Chalabi has missed her calling. She should become a lobbyist or go into public relations. Public relation is the family business. Am I being unfair in my indictments against Ms. Chalabi? Probably. Then again, Ms. Chalabi isn’t playing fairly either.