Remember Ahmed Chalabi?

Go read Kevin Drum, who muses about the source of the Bush-Cheney / neoconservative talking points about Iraq. Here's why:

Charming. "De-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people." Of course, that begs the question: why did de-Baathification come before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people? Sure, George Bush bears ultimate responsibility, but who was it that felt that strongly about de-Baathification and had the influence to get it adopted as official policy? There's really only one candidate: our old friend Ahmed Chalabi and his neocon friends in the Pentagon. As it stands now, it appears that Chalabi (a) deliberately fed us bad prewar intelligence about Iraqi WMD, (b) convinced us to disband the Iraqi army as part of a personal power play, (c) may have betrayed highly sensitive U.S. secrets to the Iranian government, and (d) is playing footsie with insurgent leader Muqtada al-Sadr. And that's just the highlights.