Chalabi aides said its part of a "smear campaign by the CIA" and U.S. Administrator Paul Bremer is trying to intimidate Chalabi because of his call for full Iraqi sovereignty and his insistence that the United Nations Food for Oil program be investigated.

Chalabi's nephew, Salim Chalabi, said the forces entered his uncle's home, put a gun to Chalabi's head and threatened him.

[...]

"This is an act of aggression, politically motivated against a person who's an Iraqi national, an Iraqi patriot, who's defending the rights of the Iraqi people, who's standing in the face of occupation to have full sovereignty to Iraqis."

"He's defending the issue of pursuing the Oil for Food program investigation," Qanbar said. "He's defending the full sovereignty. There are attempts to undermine sovereignty in Iraq. He's defending the issue of not accepting any ruling by any foreign entity inside Iraq. And he's been targeted for doing some things good for the Iraqi people."

"The U.S. military went on an order by Bremer," Qnabar said. "They wanted to intimidate Dr. Chalibi for defending things that Bremer did not like, such as sovereignty, such as oil for food program. They want to whitewash it because there is political motivation to bring the U.N. to Iraq."

Qanbar said the raid was part of a "smear campaign by the CIA," and not related to any investigation into what happened with money the Pentagon has given to the INC. "The funding of the Iraqi National Congress was audited many, many times and the auditing came in our favor," he said.

It next occured to me that the Bush administration has at last settled on a scapegoat for the entire Iraq debacle. Having tried to pin moral responsibility on liberals and Democrats for not being sufficiently supportive of the war, but failing to get much traction on that except among their hard-core loyalists, it looks now, perhaps, as if Chalabi is going to be blamed for giving us false intelligence and for manipulating the situation for his own gain.

The problem is that Chalabi isn't the patsy type, and is not going to sit still for being put on the spot. The open question is whether the people of Iraq will be as gullible and susceptible to his bullshit as the neocons in the Bush administration were.