Hmmm Chalabi needed money so he decided to atack Clinton

Jane Mayer's excellent and important article in the New Yorker includes this very interesting passage.

Chalabi was running out of money, however, and he needed new patrons. Brooke said that he and Chalabi hit upon a notion that, he admitted, was “naked politics”: the I.N.C.’s disastrous history of foiled C.I.A. operations under the Clinton Administration could be turned into a partisan weapon for the Republicans. “Clinton gave us a huge opportunity,” Brooke said. “We took a Republican Congress and pitted it against a Democratic White House. We really hurt and embarrassed the President.” The Republican leadership in Congress, he conceded, “didn’t care that much about the ammunition. They just wanted to beat up the President.” Nonetheless, he said, senior Republican senators, including Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, “were very receptive, right away.”

All very clear. Chalabi has alienated his patrons at the CIA and so he decides to get into the Clinton bashing biz. The Clinton bashers are totally cynical so they get along fine.

There is one odd bit. What exactly does this have to do with money ? Is it just that the Iraq Liberation Act was payment for Clinton bashing services rendered ? Or did some rich Clinton haters pay up front ?

I stress that I am in no way hinting that I suspect that Richard Mellon Scaife is a friend of Iranian spies.