Meanwhile, back in Frostbite Falls,,,,,,

From Juan Cole:

Fakhri al-Qaisi of the National Dialogue Council was assassinated in Baghdad on Saturday. The Sunni politician had helped draft the new Iraqi constitution and was running for parliament. His group is part of a Sunni religious coalition that is running in the December 15 elections, a move opposed by the guerrilla movement, which most likely then took him out. Guerrillas also fired on a minibus near Balad Ruz northeast of Baghdad, killing 13 persons. The minibus was carrying a family of Shiite "Faili" Kurds.

The National Dialogue Council [Sunni Arab] called for the resignation Saturday of Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi, after the latter threatened that houses harboring terrorists would be destroyed. He was referring to US air strikes on suspected terrorist safe houses. Collective punishment is forbidden to occupying powers by the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, since the Nazis had used it so extensively.

Iraqi deputy premier Ahmad Chalabi met Saturday with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. IRNA writes, '"Iraq territorial integrity and independence and strength are special concerns for Iran." The president also expressed concern on terrorism gripping Iraq and loss of lives of many innocent people saying that "these events are the tragic outcome of the occupation by foreign forces." "Insecurity is an excuse for the continuation of the presence of US forces in the region." Ahmadinejad further welcomed the Iraqi initiative for drawing a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces form the country.' Chalabi admitted, ' One of Iraq's high priorities in charting out its foreign policy is to boost its relations with Iran "which has played a positive role in the composition and formation of the Iraqi government . . . " '

Knight Ridder profiles Muqtada al-Sadr, who by joining the United Iraqi Alliance coalition of religious Shiite parties has raised his political profile.

Douglas Jehl of the NYT reports that the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence professionals strongly suspected that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was lying when he alleged, after his capture in Pakistan in 2001, that Iraq was training al-Qaeda in use of chemical weapons for terrorism. Common sense would have dictated that when a prisoner is in custody and telling you something explosive like this, you would only believe it if it was corroborated by other evidence.

But the fact is that that the US had captured no al-Qaeda operatives who were trained in Iraq. And of all the money flows traced, none led back to Iraq. They all went to Pakistan via the Gulf. There was never any reason to believe al-Libi, whether the DIA found him credible or not. That they thought he was a liar, in addition to the lack of corroborating evidence for what he was saying, made it criminal for Bush to be quoting this "information" in his speeches.

Moreover, other high-level al-Qaeda operatives such as Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah, who were far more important and informed than Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, were telling the same interrogators that Bin Laden had forbidden al-Qaeda operatives from cooperating with the secular Arab nationalist, Saddam Hussein. Their credible information, which tracked with the reality visible in arrests and the money trail, was suppressed by Bush and Cheney, whereas they trumpeted al-Libi's tall tales to the US public in order to build their case for an Iraq War.