REFS UNPERSONS

In researching the previous post, I found the pic of Pachachi and Chalabi at the SOtU on the White House website, through a link from Hesiod's blog that was posted a couple weeks ago.

The picture is from a State of the Union photo gallery on the White House site. However, the picture itself is no longer accessible from the SOtU portal page. You can only get to it by searching for photos from January 20, 2004.

I guess I can't blame them. Though I must wonder if Chalabi's neocon dead-ender allies mentioned the photo snub when they confronted Condi & company in the West Wing a few days ago.

But the White House has gone further than that. It looks like Chalabi's name has been cleansed (vaporized? hehe) from the State of the Union guest list.

Maybe it wasn't there to begin with (the mysterious "Mrs. Bush's special guest" entries on the linked page). But since the guest lists the White House released to various news organizations at the time included Chalabi, one has to assume at at some point his name was among those listed on the White House page.

...Chalabi was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson. Any identifiable reference to him would have been mortally dangerous...