Did Chalabi Con Neocons for Iran?

Re “Suspicion of Chalabi Deception Intensifies,” May 23:

As the sands of geopolitical decay swirl about presidential dreams of stability in Iraq, suddenly -- magically -- our administration has an epiphany. The information for which we paid $33 million or more to Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress since 1990 -- and upon which we based our invasion, I mean “liberation,” of Iraq -- was false, fraudulent and brought to us by unreliable and duplicitous agents of Chalabi. Chalabi is discredited, and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, his cash cow, closes the “bank.” Perfect.

Jerome V. Posell

Calabasas

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Talk about statecraft: Using the clever Chalabi and the ignorant, incompetent and vengeance-bent Bush administration, Iran manipulated the U.S. into achieving what Iran could not achieve after eight years of war: ending Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority control over Iraq. Little cost to Iran; great cost to the U.S. Brilliant.

Thomas Bliss

Sherman Oaks

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He was convicted of bank fraud and embezzlement in Jordan in 1992 and can’t go back there. That’s Chalabi, an Iraqi exile who walks, talks and acts like a dictator.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the CIA warned that he could not be trusted, but there he was, sitting with our first lady to hear the president speak to Congress.

He was installed in a Baghdad mansion by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and was to become the next leader of Iraq. Now we have trashed his home, taken away his computers and files and declared him to be a bad guy. What a mess!

Jack Corkery

San Clemente

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U.S. officials have decided that Chalabi was “the wrong man” (“From Ally to Outcast in U.S. Eyes,” May 21). A thorough reading reveals the real reason he was betrayed by those who had earlier embraced him: He thought for himself, wanted Iraqi independence and wouldn’t unquestioningly obey top U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III and the Bush administration. This incident is the latest and best evidence that the neoconservatives want to turn Iraq into a fiefdom, not a democracy, and that anyone who opposes their plans will be vilified, betrayed and attacked.

Dan Brezenoff

Long Beach