What Do Ahmad Chalabi, Sarah Palin & the NRA Have in Common?

Laura Rosen asks, in MoJo, here

"..Brooke says he met Scheunemann in 1996 when he and Chalabi were hitting Capitol Hill to try to drum up increased US government support for the Iraqi opposition. Brooke's pitch then was that putting pressure on Saddam Hussein was not just the right policy; it was also a vehicle for attacking Bill Clinton, then running for reelection. Still, Scheunemann, who then worked for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, was initially skeptical. After he and Chalabi made their pitch, Brooke said, "Randy said, 'This is all fine but on the other hand, the
CIA and other parts of the US government tell me that the Iraqi opposition is a feckless bunch of people, that can't do anything, have no support inside the country, and have probably been up to no good all over the place.'" Brooke says he encouraged Scheunemann to do his own research, and eventually convinced him. Brooke's view of Scheunemann is echoed by most of those who know him; going back to his earliest days in Washington, they say, he held an abiding faith in the neoconservative tenet that America must project both its values and its military superiority abroad, in particular to fight totalitarian regimes.

In between those campaigns, Scheunemann left the Hill to become a lobbyist, first going to work in 1998 at the Mercury Group, where his clients have included oil company BP and the National Rifle Association. (In January 1997, Scheunemann was arrested by Capitol Hill police for driving into the Capitol zone with a shotgun in his vehicle...., and in 2001 he founded Orion Strategies LLC, where he specialized in representing former East bloc countries seeking to become members of NATO, including Latvia, Romania, Georgia, and Macedonia as well as Lockheed Martin. That year, Scheunemann also served as a
consultant on Iraq to the office of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Scheunemann's lobbying on behalf of NATO expansion raised eyebrows earlier this year: In August, the Washington Post reported that Scheunemann had prepped McCain for a phone call with the president of Georgia on the same day, April 18, 2008, that Orion Strategies "signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government." (McCain shares his adviser's hostile view toward Moscow; even before the invasion of Georgia this summer, he suggested kicking Russia out of the G8.).."