What do the CIA, the New York Times, and the government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan all have in common? Why, the attempt to torpedo the political career of Ahmad Chalabi, as the New York Sun makes clear today in an excellent article by Eli Lake. (link requires subscription).

They have failed miserably, as Chalabi today is all but certain to win an influential position in the body to be elected later this month, in the first—ever free elections in Iraq. Meanwhile, designated leader Iyad Allawi, Chalabi's old rival, is reduced to offering $100 bills to Arab journalists and promising pork barrel spending to constituencies he won't be leading after the election.

...by campaigning against him, Jordan's monarchy and America's spies gave Mr. Chalabi the legitimacy they insisted he lacked. Mr. Allawi, the CIA, and Jordan favored a strategy that essentially purchased Iraqi security through buying off many of the functionaries of the old Baathist regime. At the time, this rapprochement was sold as the only viable strategy for placating the violent Sunni terrorists who have declared war against the right to vote of their countrymen.

But in the rehabilitation of the Baath Party, many Iraqis became enraged at the prospect of returning to tyranny. It was Mr. Allawi who sent envoys to Syria in August to meet with senior leaders of the insurgency and invited a reconstituted Baath Party to help plan the elections Iraq will hold on January 30. One reason why proceedings of the special court to try Saddam Hussein stopped almost entirely during this period was out of concern it would further incite the decapitators, assassins, and car bombers.

In this political environment, Mr. Chalabi needed only to ask people to judge him by his enemies. If he was hated before because of his close ties to America's corrupt occupation, his absence from the interim regime that took power last June was the key to his rehabilitation.

To be sure, Mr. Chalabi is no saint. When he was a close ally of the Coalition Provisional Authority, he surrounded himself in some cases with thugs who bullied bureaucrats at the Finance Ministry. His dealings with Iranian intelligence made it nearly impossible for his friends in Washington to defend him back in May. It would have been nice had he defended Mithal al—Alusi more vocally when an Iraqi court threatened to imprison him for visiting Israel.

But for all of his faults, President Bush should be pleased that Mr. Chalabi will be in a position to influence the new Iraq. Four years ago, when Mr. Chalabi was still trying to persuade official Washington to topple Saddam Hussein, he gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute where he described decades of American policy in the Middle East as nothing more than "managing people with dictators."

The dictators and their enablers failed miserably in trying to defeat Mr. Chalabi. The fact that his star is rising again is a victory for the president and his doctrine.

Ed Lasky and Thomas Lifson  1 20 05