Muqtada As-Sadr---Ahmad Chalabi Alliance: You have to hear Ahmad Chalabi these days. I heard him today on AlJazeera: he sounds like an enthusiastic spokesperson for As-Sadr. He went on in details about how As-Sadr's movement is a popular movement of "mahrumin" (the deprived/disinherited) (borrowing from the name of the Shi`ite sectarian movement Amal Movement (The Movement of the Disinherited) in Lebanon which had been funded--unbeknownst to most--by none other than Chalabi in the 1980s). I in fact read in some Arabic papers yesterday that Muqtada as-Sadr has named Chalabi as his chosen mediator with the Iraqi (puppet) government. And some ignorant US media still refer to Chalabi as a "secular moderate." Don't be surprised if Chalabi stays in Iran for good, giving interviews on his death bed about the American "conspiracy." He today said that US forces started as "liberators" but wound up as "occupiers." He did not say that the transition miraculously occurred when he was abandoned by the occupiers.