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An Iraqi judge warrant was issued for Ahmed Chalabi's arrest today, on charges of counterfeiting. A warrant was also issued for his nephew, Salem Chalabi, for murder.

There are two basic possibilities here. One: Ahmed Chalabi is guilty, in which case it's about time we started admitting that the guy behind a lot of our evidence against Iraq is a liar and a crook. Those Iraqi defectors? He found them. He made up the meeting between Muhammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague. He may have been slipping information to Iran. He made up wacky stories about Saddam. He had the New York Times in his back pocket. Talk about a brilliant con man...

Or maybe he's just being abused by crooked judges, in which case -- if Iraq is the kind of country in which that sort of thing can happen openly -- we've already come perilous close to failure. Take your choice.