Ahmed Chalabi: Iraq's "Comeback Kid"

Robert L. Pollock writes about the return of America's onetime ally in Iraq in today's Wall street Journal:

Things now are a little different from the last time I saw Mr. Chalabi, in June 2004. Then, I had to break away from a military delegation headed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The "one-time Pentagon favorite"--what a risible journalistic cliché that's become--wasn't even on official speaking terms with the arch "neo-con" as a result of a National Security Council directive aimed at "marginalizing" him. This meant raiding Mr. Chalabi's home, holding him (unarmed) at gunpoint, and the filing of trumped-up charges against him by a Bremer-appointed judge who has since been dismissed from his job by Iraq's judicial authorities for unethical conduct. Improbable allegations that he somehow obtained and then passed sensitive U.S. information to Iran (another anonymously sourced story Newsweek really ought to revisit) had also appeared. The would-be coup de grace occurred once interim Prime Minister Allawi took power and U.S. forces began stripping Mr. Chalabi's guards of their weapons and permits to carry them. If this was "marginalization," Mr. Chalabi could have been forgiven for wondering if his elimination was the real intention.

But then something unexpected--at least to Mr. Chalabi's detractors--happened. He stayed put. The CIA line was that he was a mere dilettante, who'd give up when the going got rough and retreat to his "five-star hotels" and "Savile Row suits." Indeed, how could it be otherwise, given that he had "no support" in Iraq? But that assessment, like so much else, was part of the CIA's larger Iraq intelligence failure.