Taibbi should have stopped with this comparison probably:
The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again, a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private assertions.
Also, he needs an "as" in that sentence, hope the proofreaders caught this before it went to print.
Plus I think the comparison works better backwards here, stuff like the whole "pee tape" story do more to help illustrate to people
now the kinds of tales that Chalabi was spreading practically unchecked by anyone back in the day. Versus bringing those up and expecting anyone who isn't Mandark (or me) to remember those.
My personal favorite was the woodchipper story that was almost an exact duplicate of the Fargo scene taken to eleven. I always imagine Saddam or Qusay like catching the film on TNT or something then deciding it'd be fun. (I don't remember if that exact one was one of Chalabi's though, a lot of people were using that one with zero confirmation, also like a bunch of fake soldiers or something tried to claim they found it while in Iraq or something.)
edit: neat, it has its own Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shredderAnn Clwyd wrote in The Times six days later, an article entitled "See men shredded, then say you don't back war,"
