Standing of Former Key U.S. Ally in Iraq Falls to New Low (Chalabi - WP)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43775-2004May20.html

Excerpt:

Since then, Chalabi's standing has gradually eroded, until yesterday, when a U.S.-backed raid on his compound marked a new nadir. Although Chalabi has always been a divisive figure, even quarters that once strongly supported him were distancing themselves yesterday. Many administration officials would not speak on the record yesterday because of the contentious relations some had with him.

"The vast majority of reports of his proximity to and influence on administration policy have been greatly exaggerated," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy who knows Chalabi. "The reality is that he was among a wide variety of Iraqi figures who made the case to an array of American officials over a period of time for the liberation of the Iraqi people."

As Josh Marshall notes in his take, "Ahmed who?"

Welcome to the new spin/product line...

By all appearances, Ahmad Chalabi reached the pinnacle of influence in Washington four months ago, when he took a seat of honor right behind Laura Bush at the president's State of the Union address. To all the world, he looked like the Iraqi exile who had returned home victorious, a favorite of the Pentagon who might run the country once the American occupation ended.
<snip>
The intelligence about unconventional weapons that his Iraqi National Congress helped feed to senior Bush administration officials and data-starved intelligence analysts — evidence that created the urgency behind the march toward war — was already crumbling. Intelligence officials now argue some of it was fabricated. The much-discussed, much-denied effort by Pentagon officials to install him as Iraq's leader had already faded.
<snip>
Now he says that with the liberation of Iraq, the United States should get out of the way. "My message is let my people go, let my people be free," he said, clearly angry that his bedroom had been invaded and that his computers and papers had been confiscated. "We are grateful to President Bush for liberating Iraq, but it is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs."
<snip>
Over the years, the Iraqi National Congress has received about $33 million from the State Department, according to a new General Accounting Office report. In addition it got $6 million from the Defense Intelligence Agency. In return, Mr. Chalabi provided intelligence on weapons that one senior American intelligence official described earlier this week as "useless at best, and misleading at worst." Other officials say Mr. Chalabi's group was more accurate in identifying the whereabouts of former Saddam Hussein loyalists.
<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/politics/21EXIL.html

The raid was a remarkable reversal for a man who, in lunches with politicians, secret sessions with intelligence chiefs and frequent conversations with reporters from Foggy Bottom to London's Mayfair, worked furiously to plot Mr. Hussein's fall.

His biggest success came in 1998. That year a group of influential conservatives wrote an "Open Letter" to President Bill Clinton calling for "regime change" in Iraq to become the official policy of the United States. Those signing the document included many of the men who came to dominate the top ranks of the Bush administration three years later: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul D. Wolfowitz, Douglas J. Feith, Richard L. Armitage, Elliott Abrams and Zalmay M. Khalilzad, among others.

Their entreaty helped propel an act of Congress that Mr. Clinton endorsed. And the letter stated clearly that the United States should "recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.) that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq."

~snip~

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Among Mr. Chalabi's other vociferous defenders over the last three years have been Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, who could often be overheard describing Mr. Chalabi's love of both the Iraqi people and the land he left at age 13. But both men were careful never to state outright what role they thought Mr. Chalabi should play, beyond a confidence he would rise to the top.

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Bet Chalabi was involved in the secret Energy Task Force.....:eyes:

"The reality is that he was among a wide variety of Iraqi figures who made the case to an array of American officials over a period of time for the liberation of the Iraqi people."

Did we pay all of those Iraqi figures $40 million plus?

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Throughout much of its relationship with him, the United States has been willing to shrug off Chalabi's past as a convicted felon disliked and mistrusted by many in the Arab world. In 1992, Chalabi, whose family fled Iraq when he was a teenager, was sentenced in absentia by Jordan to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of embezzlement and other bank fraud charges.
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WTF...rummy, cheney and wolfie might have some splainin to do. Watch the spin begin.

This guy just reeks larceny. The only thing that'll save his life now is his thorough marginalization; with as many enemies as he has, it might just make him safe: he's not a threat if nobody can stand him.

Still, he knows WAAAAY too much for the Bushies to feel comfortable, and if he's on the "outs", he could become a canary.