How US foreign policy works, part CLXIII

It's from 2008, but if you haven't read it before, I highly recommend former UNSCOM weapon inspector Scott Ritter's account of his dinner with Ahmad Chalabi and a bunch of neocon operatives back in 1998. It's illuminating about Chalabi, about Washington, and about how the neocon network's view of Iraq long predates the Bush administration.

There was a knock at the door, and Chalabi's butler answered. In walked Rademaker's wife, Danielle Pletka, accompanied by none other than James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA. They found seats around the table, and it became clear that this was where we would be eating. The discussion moved from the flawed military planning evident in Gen. Downing's paper and onto the issue of Chalabi's political future. Jim Woolsey was an unabashed supporter of Chalabi, something I found strange since Chalabi and the CIA were at odds over many aspects of the INC's past operations. "This [criticism] is all bunk," Woolsey said. "Chalabi is an Iraqi patriot and visionary who intimidates many lesser thinkers in Langley [CIA headquarters]. My friend Ahmed is a risk taker who understands the reality of Iraq, unlike the desk-bound analysts and risk-averse operators at the CIA. Chalabi scares these people, so they have created false accusations in order to denigrate him and ultimately destroy him." Danielle Pletka chimed in. "We cannot allow this to happen. Ahmed Chalabi has many friends in Congress, and it is our goal to make sure Ahmed Chalabi gets the support he needs to not only survive as a viable opposition figure to Saddam Hussein but more importantly to prevail in Iraq."

These people should really pay for what they did.