After more than a year's absence from media limelight, Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmad Chalabi has resurfaced and as bold as brass, too.

Or overflowing with chutzpah as the Jews would have it, for he counts quite a number of their powerful as buddies.

This is a character even the most imaginative of fiction writers or spinners of tall tales from Texas would find hard put to conjure up.

It's also difficult to imagine that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly had him in the cross-hair for allegedly leaking secrets to Iran. Despite that, he could still, earlier this month, waltz into the US.

Chalabi, the siren whose songs led the US to crash against the bloody rock that is now Iraq, had returned to his more-or-less adopted country in his latest incarnation as Iraq's deputy prime minister.

His welcome was not as warm as it would have been if ousted president Saddam Hussein's illusionary weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been found.

However, the media attention Chalabi, a Shi'ia, received upon his arrival must have more than made up for that deficiency even as the Democrats were baying for his blood.

When pressed, he airily dismissed the WMD issue as though it was irrelevant since more pressing matters demanded attention.

A look into his background would help put Chalabi's role in the whole mess in some sort of perspective.

His is a country considered to be the cradle of Western civilisation on which the Americans and their allies defecated bombs, missiles and sundry other munitions.

Guile and deception are mother's milk to the descendants of ancient Mesopotamia and Babylon as well. Not for them the tunnel vision of the blinkered ideologue.

Israeli connections

Chalabi himself was born into a wealthy aristocratic family which, together with others, fled into exile when the military toppled the monarchy in 1958.

He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US before earning a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. By then he had become a familiar face within the circles of the Republican Party's conservatives or neo-cons.

His introduction to that particular group of movers and shakers was facilitated in 1985 by fellow mathematician and strategist at the Chicago University, one Albert Wohlstetter, the godfather of the Republican Party's neo-cons.

Chalabi, described as a nattily dressed charmer, got himself so embedded with this group with that he was even invited to address hardcore pro-Israel organisations.

In Washington he won over bodies like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in addition to the American Enterprise Institution. All Israel's cheerleaders.

Among strong backers in the Bush administration, Chalabi could count on Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his former deputy and now president of the World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, as well as key staffers in the vice-president's office.

After getting his doctoral degree, Chalabi spent some time in Lebanon, an immediate neighbour of Iran, teaching at a Beirut university before returning to the US.

We are not privileged to know whether this was when Chalabi build up his Teheran contacts but subsequent events appear to point in that direction.

His time came when Saddam, yet another CIA creation, invaded Kuwait in 1990 and was booted out the following year.

That was when George Bush Sr, father of the current US president, directed the CIA to pull together the fractious Iraqi opposition to topple Saddam for allegedly being a threat to neighbouring countries. Israel was foremost in his mind.

The obvious choice to set the directive rolling was Chalabi who was anointed leader of the London-based Iraqis. The INC received millions in covert funding in the 1990s and an annual grant of US$8 million with the adoption of the Iraq Liberation Act 1998, according to the Wikipedia encyclopaedia.

Disastrous attempts

But by 1996 disenchantment with Chalabi had set in the CIA, State Department and the military establishment.

The change of heart followed a serious of disastrous undercover attempts to undermine Saddam's finances by sabotaging Iraq's oil installations among other activities.

The collaboration among the various factions which included Kurds, Shi'ia and Sunni among others within the Iraqi opposition also collapsed.

Chalabi was deemed an opportunist. He was shunned by all Western powers except for Britain. Ostracised by the Arab world, he is looked down upon even by his former allies in the Iraqi opposition. However, his support within the neo-con circle and outside the Pentagon remained unshaken.

Then came the 9/11 attacks on the US and Chalabi's star was on the ascendant again with the INC regaining credibility.

Do an Internet search of his name, and the engine will show links to a wide range of documents and website links on how Washington was nudged down the slippery slope to 'Hotel California' from which they are now struggling to check out.

Stirring words

Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Akins, who has knowledge of neo-con thinking, is on record as saying that - before the war - the plan was to denationalise the Iraqi oil industry and farm it out to American oil companies.

Chalabi, once president, was presumed to facilitate this matter. As soon as Iraq was theirs, the next move was to shut down the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, leaving the US the dominant global power with its near absolute control of the life-blood of industry.

The surrealistic Dr Strangelove-like scheme to achieve this objective was to dismember Saudi Arabia using the Shi'ite minority there to link up with their fellow co-religionists in Iraq.

This plot was premised on the illusion that the Shi'ites in Southern Iraq would welcome American troops with open arms and the rest of the population just needed a hint of invasion to rise up against their tyrant.

The moves, once successful, were supposed to give Washington absolute control of all the oil in the Persian Gulf. And Chalabi encouraged this irresistible vision of a refurbished new world order.

An example of this was one of his INC strategists; Kanan Mykiya who fed neo-con dreams by publicly declaring in early 2002 that Saddam's removal would present America with a historic opportunity which he believed would be as huge as the 1917 fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The stirring words fitted neatly into the neo-con larger scheme of things. So against the advice of both the CIA and the State Department, with the United Nations contemptuously dismissed, they went to war against a foe already prostrate from 12 years of economic sanctions.

Last year, US intelligence services leaked information that Chalabi had handed over secrets to Teheran. Patriotic anger was provoked and vows made that the dastardly deed would not go unpunished.

Reportedly denying this outright, Chalabi insisted that the INC was allied to the US though admittedly he had visited Teheran on several occasions. However, all the threats have come to naught so far.

Different song

As the war dragged on, Chalabi began singing a different song, telling the US to hand over power to the Iraqi as quickly as possible and then criticising them for not heeding his advice.

To run salt into that wound, the INC did well enough in the polls to elect the interim government earlier this year for Chalabi to be rewarded with the deputy premiership responsible for the oil portfolio.

Apparently he did so well in cutting down in the hitherto underhanded methods of conducting business that he earned American admiration. There is now talk that he may become the next prime minister.

They might be in for a surprise yet for this particular chameleon might change colour if he were to ultimately fulfill their wish.

Now turning to the puzzle why Chalabi seems so blas about the charges against him: the conclusion that he must have salted away loads of dirt on the neo-cons with international law firms is hard to ignore.

The threat of the exposure before the international media would be an effective deterrent against anyone inclined to harm him. Even if no solid proof comes to light, in the history of the Great Game, this could count as one of the greatest coup.

The sole superpower is in acute discomfort. With its military strength under heavy strain and the general populace discontented over the Iraqi war, it could spell the end of the ultimate neo-con dream.

Perhaps nature has designed a self-destruct mechanism which kicks in when power is abused beyond a certain limit, the US being the latest victim.

Mice on a treadmill. The human condition.