THE JAY GATSBY OF IRAQ….Alan Weisman writes in the LA Times today about Richard Perle and Ahmed Chalabi:
Perle, of course, was the most prominent and aggressive advocate of Chalabi, dubbed the “Jay Gatsby of Iraq” for his social life and financial scandals, as the leader of a new Iraq.
“The Jay Gatsby of Iraq” fits Chalabi nicely, though, unfortunately, it’s a little bit of stretch to say that Chalabi has been “dubbed” this. As near as I can tell, George Packer quoted Noah Feldman calling Chalabi the ”Jay Gatsby of the Iraq War” in The Assassins’ Gate, H.D.S. Greenway repeated it in a late 2005 piece for the Boston Globe, and Weisman is the first one to mention it since. I guess maybe now I’m the fourth. But it deserves wider exposure, no?
