There is, on the other hand, ample evidence that foreign intelligence agencies, elements of our press, the international left, and important components of our own bureaucracies, are his determined enemies, and want to paint the entire Iraqi war as a mistake and unjustified. And pin it on a number of suspects, including Chalabi, administration "neo-cons", da joos - and W.
Every one of whom fully supports Bush and our actions in Iraq and wants them to succeed. Their targets, that is. Not the shooters. Jordan did not support us. Elements of state and CIA did not. The press did not.
Chalabi does not always support US policy toward Iraq. There is no reason why he should. US policy toward Iraq has been a moving target and transcendentally stupid at times (backing Saddam, leaving him in power after gulf I, etc).
As for Chalabi's past with Jordan, to understand it you need to know that Chalabi heads the successor to the Iraqi monarchist party. Chalabi entered politics to further Iraqi monarchists, attempting to restore the Iraqi throne. And the Iraqi throne was held by a Hashemite king - the same royal family as currently rules Jordan. Descended from a different son of the Sherif of Mecca, whose family was rewarded for backing the British in WW I with rule of much of the near east.
Chalabi shifted over time from wanting to restore the Iraqi monarchy, to just wanting to get rid of the Baathists and Saddam in particular. He acknowledged that the time of monarchy has past, and a post Baath Iraq would be a republic. But back in the 1970s, he was a full blown monarchic restorationist.
In exile. In Jordan. Now, in middle east politics, harboring an exile who publicly states his goal as overthrow of a neighboring state's government in order to put a man in charge of it from the same family, is not generally considered a peaceful and friendly thing. Jordan harboring Chalabi meant a foreign policy orientation of hostility toward Iraq. They were using him. He was their monarchist organizer.
But when they made their peace with Baathist Iraq and wanted good relations with Saddam, that meant Chalabi had to go. It meant the means used to finance him had to be repudiated. Chalabi's bank failed after the Jordanian state seized it and froze all of its assets. The charges against him amounted, in effect, to "you took our intelligence payments and now, later, we have no use for you, so that was stealing."
Chalabi, you see, has been sold out before. By experts. A dozen times. He is still around.
Our own state and CIA types hate him because he knows all the times they sold out the Iraqi people in some cynical deal or another. All the times we helped Saddam gas his enemies. All the times our navy helped protect his war finances. All the times we told people inside Iraq to fight against Saddam and then left them in the lurch.
Chalabi has been more consistently in favor of our present policy in Iraq than the United States government has been - let alone Saddam allies like the Jordanians. He has been urging us to oust Saddam for decades. Now, when we finally do, the forces that opposed it every step of the way want to blame him for getting us to finally do the right thing. A man surrounded by vipers, he is considered one simply because they smear him relentlessly. No one can actually say what he is supposed to have done wrong.
And make no mistake. The guys engineering this want Bush to lose. They want the whole Iraq war to have been a mistake. (If you doubt it, check out the latest Newsweek cover - the whole road to war is his fault). One they can blame on somebody else. Then they will get along fine with Kerry. Who will put the UN in charge. And turn the oil money back on.
Smashing friends like Chalabi is simply stupid. It is also about par for how wise our policies have typically been in the region. All those winking about secret in the know stuff are overlooking the elephant in the living room. Our oh so clever inside knowledge cyncial deals brought us from the fall of the Shah to the present state. In which about the only bright spot, the only time we've actually made any progress, has been when we fought Saddam just as Chalabi always urged.
Regardless of what happens to Chalabi now, in relations with us or in Iraqi politics, he will be remembered by history as one of the founding fathers of Iraqi freedom and independence. Simply for his leadership through the years of tyranny, and his steadfastness even against supposed allies who so often tried to sell out Iraqi freedom. When nobody can remember who Bremer or Tenet was, historians will look kindly on him, and consider the present period a disgrace and a mistake on our part.
One more in a very long series.
I agree with your analysis. It's another clumsy betrayal of the CiC - and American interests - by scumbag careerists in the State or the CIA or both.
Like the other attempts to subvert this noble quest, this too will fail.