‘Politics make strange bedfellows' goes the old saying, and nowhere is that more apparent in the recent reemergence of Ahmad Chalabi as a political leader in Iraq. Chalabi was, of course, one of the main advocates for the US invasion of Iraq, and the US fabricated information, with his input, about Saddam Hussein's store of WMDs and other intelligence to justify its actions there. The revelation that Chalabi's information was downright wrong put him on the US's bad side in public eyes, and his alliance with Shiite parties connected to radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr had driven him further away from the country he bamboozled into war (or, perhaps, a Bush administration looking to be bamboozled). But the alliance of this sectarian Shiite with radical elements has elevated his profile domestically. As one Iraqi living in the Sadrist neighborhood put it, “The Americans hate him. The Jordanians arrested him. So he must be good.” It is easy – and, perhaps, even necessary – to overlook the jockeying and horse-trading that take place in democracies as political figures build and cement alliances in efforts to advance their own platform. In the case of Chalabi, however, there appears to be no real platform beyond that of acquiring and cementing power for himself. His role in removing some 500 former Baathists from the recent elections was seen as heavily influenced by Iran, a partnership with whom Chalabi seems eager to advance in the wake of what he sees as waning US power in the region. Chalabi recently called the press to observe his family's charity providing prosthetics to whom he called victims of the US invasion. Obviously, Chalabi is to be treated with extreme caution, an admonition that should have been made to the Bush neo-cons nearly a decade ago. He has proven himself to be an extremely adept, if completely Machiavellian, player on the political scene. And the need of someone like that to come to prominence in Iraq is in extreme doubt. __
