LIKE GLENN CLOSE IN THE BATHTUB

Joe Klein writes in Time about the unkillable career of Ahmed Chalabi:

... He currently serves as Deputy Prime Minister in Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government. And now -- trumpet clarion here -- he is coming back to Washington in November at the invitation of Treasury Secretary John Snow. But Chalabi will have potentially more significant meetings with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and perhaps Condoleezza Rice, both of whom -- according to high-ranking Administration officials -- believe that he is a plausible and acceptable candidate to be the next Prime Minister of Iraq when that nation votes, yet again, for a new government on Dec. 15.

... the Bush Administration harbors a gossamer strand of hope that the Dec. 15 election will finally produce a strong Iraqi government, a real coalition of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. The Administration also realizes it may take a supremely oleaginous political thug, perhaps someone as rare and fetid as Ahmad Chalabi, to bring it off....

Good grief.

I know this is pure fantasy, but if we can seize Manuel Noriega and put him in a U.S. jail, why can't we do the same to this son of a bitch for disseminating the lies that led to this godforsaken war?

(But hey, maybe Chalabi will take Judy Miller off Bill Keller's hands. I bet she'd make a swell information minister....)