Kudos to Layla Shaykhali: `Allawi in the hot seat. You had to see the interview with Iyad `Allawi (former puppet prime minister/Saddam's henchman/embezzler-in-Yemen/car bomber) on AlJazeera Arabic TV's Bila Hudud--you can still see it on rerun. Layla Shaykhali (formerly of Abu Dhabi TV) did an outstanding job. I have never seen him squirm as much during an interview. Normally, he is interviewed by US journalists who know nothing about Iraq, and who are merely impressed to hear him talk about his meetings with "insurgents"--`Allawi's references to tribal leaders in the US, or he is interviewed on Al-Arabiya TV by Elie Naquzi whose toughest question to him is along the lines of "why are you so damn adorable"? Shaykhali did her homework very well (I knew her when she worked on a local Arab TV station in DC, and I met her dad at a retirement home in Maryland back in 1993). And her last question was so effective and so eloquent: and she had to remind `Allawi three times that he did not answer her question. `Allawi in the interview today was bragging about his "Ba`thist roots"--I kid you not. He denied that he is "America's man"; he said that he is Iraq's [puppet] man. He was at pains to draw a distinction between resistance and terrorism in Iraq, and claimed that he explained that distinction to Bush himself. At that point, Shaykhali intervened: she asked him how he can talk about resistance in Iraq, when he refused to even refer to occupation in Iraq. She asked him how there can be resistance when there is no occupation. He--typical of US puppets in the region--referred to "mistakes by US" in Iraq--the same language used by another puppet, Walid Jumblat. He also claimed to have had warned the US about all what later transpired months before the invasion of Iraq. She also mocked his habit of constantly mocking to withdraw from the political process, only to reverse himself. Layla Shaykhali's interview should be used as a teaching tool in journalism schools around the world.