LONDON: In the mayhem that followed the explosions in Baghdad and Karbala this week, Ahmad Chalabi, an ever more powerful member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a Pentagon favourite , was swiftly at the scene, behaving like a politician come to offer sympathy.

It was a shrewd piece of public relations - if you forget the responsibility Chalabi bears for Iraq's present tragic condition. It was Chalabi, more than any other individual, who helped persuade the US that toppling Saddam Hussein would bring peace and democracy, and break the link that he alleged existed between the Iraqi leader and Al Qaeda.

The argument surrounding the decision to go to war in Iraq, Tony Blair said on Friday, is not about trust or integrity but about judgment and intelligence. That is also the case his critics make.

In the approach to war, both the US and the UK governments mobilized a mishmash of arguments in a campaign of persuasion that was based not on rigorous analysis of intelligence but on the selective use of data and informants. And in this sorry tale, no one played a more critical role than the man many proclaim the most likely future leader of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi.

He has been working to take power in Iraq for a long time. The son of a wealthy and influential family in Iraq that lost its place with the fall of the monarchy, Chalabi has a long association with US intelligence.

In the early 1990s, he was considered a serious asset by the CIA - but they soon found him to be unreliable. By then, however, he had found other supporters, among them the staff and advisers of one of the neo- cons' favourite think tanks, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) in Washington.

In 1997, Jinsa declared: "Jinsa has been working closely with Iraqi National Council leader Dr Ahmad Chalabi to promote Saddam Hussein's removal from office and a subsequently democratic future for Iraq."

Jinsa describes its mandate as two-fold: "To educate the American public about the importance of an effective US defence capability...and to inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East."

Their interests, Chalabi persuaded them, coincided: Saddam, the supporter of Palestinian suicide bombers, the strongest and most troublesome leader in the Arab world and a menace to Israel, should be replaced with a friendly government that would make peace with Israel and become the US's best Arab friend.

The advocates of radical action in the Middle East came to power with Bush. The next steps are now well documented. As Richard Perle once complained: "The CIA has been engaged in a character assassination of Ahmad Chalabi for years now, and it's a disgrace."

To bypass such obstacles, an alternative intelligence group - the Office of Special Plans - was created. But there was still a shortage of evidence on two key points: that Saddam had WMD and that he had links to Al Qaeda.

Step forward Ahmad Chalabi, whose INC benefited from nearly $100 million of US taxpayers money, despite Chalabi's conviction for a $300 million bank fraud in Jordan. Chalabi, who knows a market when he sees one, claimed his sources inside and outside Iraq could supply the necessary evidence.

In 2001, Colin Powell declared: "He [Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction...our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbours of Iraq."

Tony Blair told the Commons in November 2000 that, "We believe that the sanctions regime has effectively contained Saddam Hussein." These assessments coincided with the view of the intelligence services and the inspectors.

The alternative intelligence, marshalled to make the case for war, came overwhelmingly from Chalabi's INC and their carefully coached "sources". Among the INC allegations that have not been borne out were that Hussein had built mobile biological weapons facilities, that he was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons programme and that he had trained Muslim warriors at a camp south of Baghdad. Now defence officials acknowledge that the defectors' tales were "shaky" at best.

On whose judgment was this shaky information included in official pre-war intelligence estimates of Iraq's illicit weapons programmes and key statements by US and UK politicians? On Sept 12, 2002, for instance, claims by Iraqi military officers supplied by the INC that Iraq had been training Arabs in "hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage and assassinations" were given uncritical prominence in a White House report. And what is now described as an INC "fabrication" - that Iraq had mobile biological warfare research facilities - was included in Powell's presentation to the UN security council in February 2003.

To give wider credibility to this dubious narrative, Chalabi planted stories in mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times, stories that were then quoted as independent corroborative evidence by administration officials.

Chalabi has admitted that the "evidence" he supplied was wrong. Unlike Blair, he is no longer interested in pretending that there are any WMD in Iraq, but nor is he repentant. Bush may lose the election and Blair is trapped in the political minefield of the war's aftermath, but Chalabi is a clear winner.

When the US flew Chalabi into Iraq by helicopter early in the war, along with 700 friends and supporters, he was not remotely electable. He did, though, look like a man positioning himself to be at the centre of power.

This week, Iraq's provisional constitution was agreed. Given Bush's need to create a puppet government in time for the US elections, power will now remain in the hands of the governing council until such time as elections might be held - a promise that recedes into the future with each terrorist outrage.

The first drafts of the Iraqi transitional administrative law were written by Chalabi's nephew. The longer elections are postponed, the better for Chalabi, who is now in control of Iraq's finances and of de-Baathification. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.