A Neocon Job

Some people, the naysayers of the Iraq "police action," call it "Bush's War." But based on what I've read, I think we might call it "Chalabi's War."

No one did more to get us into the quagmire than our Iraqi poster boy, Ahmed Chalabi. After he fed the administration and the Pentagon false information about weapons of mass destruction and assured us how peaceful the Iraqis would be after we freed the country, we decided it was time to save the Middle East.

Until recently, the hawks took Chalabi's word for everything.

I spoke to my Pentagon source, a member of the neoconservative hard hats, after Chalabi was defrocked by the media.

"Is Chalabi a good guy or a bad guy?"

"That's not the question. He was our guy."

"They said he was a spy for Iran."

"The only ones who said it were the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency. That doesn't mean it was so."

"But we supported him," I said, "because he promised to tell us where the weapons of mass destruction were."

"Chalabi had his fingers crossed," my Pentagon source replied.

"Why did he sit with Mrs. Bush during the State of the Union speech?"

"It was the only empty seat left in the balcony."

"The CIA said he was feeding the White House false information on the political situation after the invasion."

"He was just telling them what they wanted to hear. Wolfowitz and Cheney trusted him."