War With Iran? US Neocons Aim to Repeat Chalabi-Style Swindle

In 1991, Iraqi exiles set up the Iraq National Congress (INC) with funding from the CIA. Under the leadership of Ahmad Chalabi, and flush with tens of millions dollars in US government funding, the INC allied itself with the neoconservatives in Washington and unceasingly beat the drums of war, presenting itself as the popular democratic alternative to Saddam Hussein and feeding faulty intelligence to an eager media and Bush administration. Eventually, they succeeded in dragging the United States into disastrous war that cost Americans and Iraqis their lives and caused incalculable damage to American prestige and power.

Now, history may be repeating itself.

A segment of our political establishment that is chafing at the bit for a military attack on Iran has found their INC, in the form of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (also known as the MEK, or MKO), a radical Islamic terrorist group with Iranian roots that has been designated a terrorist organization since the State Department created the Foreign Terrorist Organization list in 1997.