Friend of US and Iran has too many enemies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1224064,00.html

If some in the Pentagon had got their way it would all have been different. Instead of the chaos and looting, Ahmad Chalabi would have marched into Baghdad at the head of his own "Free Iraqi" force to take over from Saddam Hussein.

At one point it looked as if that might just happen. Mr Chalabi, an urbane, plausible and apparently fearless businessman, was spirited into Iraq by the US military early in April 2003. He installed himself in Nassiriya, holding court with local dignitaries and preparing for what some sarcastically referred to as his "coronation".

But Mr Chalabi had already made too many enemies. Though he had charmed Congress into funding his Iraqi National Congress and was viewed by some in the Pentagon as Iraq's equivalent of the newly-installed Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, the state department and CIA were suspicious of him - not least because of doubts about his organisation's accounting of the funds provided by US taxpayers.

Perceptions of Mr Chalabi in the US reflect the ongoing power struggle within the Bush administration between the neoconservatives in the defence department such as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz - both great admirers of the INC leader - and more moderate voices in the state department and elsewhere.

Another problem was that he had left Iraq in the late 1950s and had little or no popular following inside the country. Iraqis, well aware of his involvement in a Jordanian banking scandal, dubbed him "Ahmad the Thief". In 1992, Mr Chalabi was tried in his absence and sentenced by a Jordanian court to 22 years' jail on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation.

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really nice piece of writing regarding Chalabi