Chalabi's con job.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Ahmad Chalabi is a scoundrel of the first order who was once convicted of defrauding his own bank in Jordan of $70 million. But that didn't keep the United States from doing business with him. Lots of business.

Chalabi had immense appeal to the Bush administration, which viewed the longtime Iraqi exile as its greatest hope to lead a democratic Iraq. But Chalabi was no leader. He was a con man who whispered into the eager ears of neo-cons such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney exactly what he knew they yearned to hear - that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and that Iraqis would eagerly welcome a U.S. invasion and occupation.

Now, Chalabi has fallen from U.S. grace. Iraqi and U.S. forces on Thursday raided his headquarters, his home and a building belonging to his Iraqi National Congress. Among other things, they were seeking evidence that Chalabi may have betrayed U.S. intelligence secrets to Iran.

In retrospect, it's hard to believe that it took so long for U.S. officials to get wise to Chalabi. His track record hardly inspires confidence: In the 1990s, he launched a coup against Saddam with CIA help that not only failed, but that led to the arrest of 200 Iraqi military officers and the execution of 80.

The United States continued to back Chalabi - and give him millions of dollars for useless intelligence - after the invasion, even when it became clear that his information about WMDs was a fabrication and after it became painfully clear that Iraqis weren't dancing in the streets.

Eventually, Chalabi's duplicity became evident to even the Bush administration.

Chalabi's adversarial role on the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council and confrontations with Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer galled even his staunchest supporters in the administration, as did his work to undermine Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. official who is scrambling to form a new Iraqi government by a U.S.-imposed June 30 deadline.

Ever the opportunist, Chalabi seized on Thursday's raid as a chance to play the anti-American card and build a power base for himself where none previously existed in Iraq. In a shameless news conference, he depicted himself as a martyr and champion of all Iraqis victimized by the U.S. occupation.

If Chalabi pulls off his latest con, U.S. officials won't have anybody to blame but themselves.