ahmad chalabi=crime pays

this is an indication of how fucked up this world is....bu$h*/cheney/chalabi


Early Backer of War, Finally Within Grasp of Power

“I did more than anyone else in persuading the U.S. to get rid of Saddam,” said Ahmad Chalabi, sitting in the dark next to his empty swimming pool.

Soon the American troops that did so will be gone. Mr. Chalabi, as perplexing and contentious as he was in the run-up to the war, will be staying behind, perhaps finally with an official grasp on power in Iraq that has always eluded him.

A candidate in the recent elections, his alliance of Shiite parties with ties to the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr is running third in the balloting, and he could well claim a seat in Parliament — something he famously did not accomplish in the last parliamentary election in 2005, when his party, the Iraqi National Congress, received just 30,000 votes of 12 million.

His electoral prospects aside, Mr. Chalabi, at 65, has improbably — and controversially — reinserted himself in Iraqi politics. His role before the parliamentary elections in disqualifying nearly 500 candidates with ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party helped raise fears about a rigged election as well as worries of disenfranchisement among Sunni Arabs, who are a minority here but were politically ascendant under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.

“Baathism in Iraq equals Naziism in Germany,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/world/middleeast/20chalabi.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print