Senator McCain’s genius political consultants are trying to steer the presidential campaign away from the economy and its down-spiraling fundamentals. Instead, they want to talk about “past associations” of the candidates.

Well, let’s talk. How about Senator McCain’s long friendship with Ahmed Chalabi, the crooked Iraqi politician and former exile who played a leading role in lobbying for a U.S. invasion of Iraq? McCain was one of the first patrons of Chalabi’s grand-sounding International Committee for a Free Iraq when it was founded in 1991.

From a 2006 article in The New Republic, by John Judis:

[In 1998] McCain co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which committed the United States to overthrowing Saddam’s regime and to funding opposition groups. McCain welcomed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to Washington and pressured the administration to give him money. When General Anthony Zinni cast doubt upon the effectiveness of the Iraqi opposition, McCain rebuked him at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

…As the war unfolded, McCain remained a Chalabi booster. With the Iraqi military crumbling in early April, McCain signed a letter with four other Republican senators complaining that Chalabi’s INC was not being funded. Appearing on “Good Morning America,” he argued for “bringing in Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress as soon as possible.”

• Chalabi sought to replace Saddam Hussein as dictator of Iraq, with the aid of the American military. He supported McCain for president in 2000, believing that the senator would be the most receptive to his agenda.
• BKSH & Associates, a lobbying firm run by Charlie Black, now John McCain’s senior adviser, took on Chalabi as a client in 1999.
• Randy Scheunemann, now John McCain’s top foreign policy aide, was part of the circle of advisors and operatives around Chalabi prior to the invasion of Iraq.
• Chalabi provided much of the fake intelligence that Bush used to justify the invasion, even though he was convicted of bank fraud in Jordan in 1992 and had been ruled unreliable by the State department and CIA.
• In 2003, an admiring McCain called Chalabi “a patriot” with Iraq’s “best interests at heart.”
• Chalabi headed up the massively counterproductive post-invasion “de-Baathification” program that put tens of thousands of armed Iraqi soldiers out of work, which created an enormous recruiting pool for the Sunni insurgency, and stripped qualified technocrats from their posts, hindering reconstruction.
• Chalabi was caught spying for Iran in 2004. He caused the largest security breach of the war: notifying the Iranians that we had cracked their communication code.
• Chalabi turned the Bush administration’s so-called “surge” to his advantage by securing a job as a special aide to Iraqi PM Maliki, which got him invited to weekly planning meetings with senior American officials such as former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and General David Petraeus. [Um, remember the part where he's an Iranian spy?]

UPDATE: Of course, Ahmed Chalabi is just one of Senator McCain’s past associations. Another one is G. Gordon Liddy, who spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. Well, maybe it’s more of a recent association:

Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as “an old friend,” and McCain sounded like one. “I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family,” he gushed. “It’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.”