For all the scrutiny on the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, there’s been a remarkable lack of curiosity with respect to his critics. Newsweek and NBC’s “Meet the Press” have quoted one Chalabi critic, Whitley Bruner, without disclosing that he is a full-time employee of a company that is 40% owned by the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Kuwaiti parliament. Time, Newsday, “Meet the Press,” and the Los Angles Times are among the many news organizations to have quoted W. Patrick Lang on the Chalabi story without mentioning his longtime business relationship with a Lebanese politician, Fouad Makhzoumi.

It’s not that the information was so hard to come by; National Review’s Web site and the magazine of the Washington Times both reported that Colonel Lang had registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent of Lebanon. And it’s not that the press routinely regards such private dealings on the part of former government officials as irrelevant. Henry Kissinger was hounded from his post as chairman of the September 11 commission because of speculation about his business connections. Richard Perle’s business dealings and work years ago with Turkey have been the subject of endless investigations in the press. He was hounded from his post on the Defense Policy Board. Yet somehow, Mr. Chalabi’s critics get a free pass.

The guide to Chalabi detractors offered by The New York Sun today at page one and on the opposite page provides a glimpse of the field. It is meant not to suggest that Mr. Chalabi is beyond criticism, or that his critics should be totally ignored — just to suggest that Mr. Chalabi’s critics deserve to be treated by President Bush, by the public, and by the press with at least the same level of skepticism as Mr. Chalabi’s friends.

The failures of disclosure extend beyond the Chalabi story. In Wednesday’s New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof quoted two experts in an attempt to prop up his flaky argument that Prime Minister Sharon “has done more to undermine Israel’s long-term security than Yasir Arafat ever did.” He identifies the experts as “Prof. Michael Hudson of Georgetown University” and “Edward Walker Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt.” Mr. Kristof fails to disclose that Mr. Hudson is Seif Ghobash Professor of Arab Studies, a chair that, according to at least one friendly press account, was endowed by the United Arab Emirates, which is a nation that is not at peace with Israel. Nor does Mr. Kristof mention that Mr. Walker’s current job is as the $84,000-a-year president of the Middle East Institute, whose funders include Saudi Aramco, the Kuwait Information Office, and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

We’re don’t mind saying that we’re encouraged by the effort that the Syrians and the Kuwaitis and the Saudis and the Jordanians and those swayed by them are expending to smear Mr. Chalabi. It wouldn’t make sense for them to bother with him at all if they figured he had no chance to turn Iraq into a free democracy.

After all, as President Bush is constantly reminding us, the example of a free democracy in Iraq has the potential to inspire change in the neighboring Middle Eastern states. For despots sitting in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Syria, that is a threat. Your child might not inherit the palace. You might lose your own power. Your citizens might start deciding their own fate.

Mr. Chalabi himself has been undeterred by the critics. His aide, Entifadh Qanbar, told us that the Iraqi patriot spent yesterday in Najaf, where he vowed to sit until a peaceful solution was achieved. He was greeted by thousands of joyful supporters, visited the shrine of Ali, and met with the spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr and with Ayatollah Sistani. And it looked last night as if — with Mr. Chalabi’s involvement — a solution was reached that would bring an end to the violence in the holy city.

It looks as if the effort by the Chalabi critics to sideline him may have failed or backfired. Mr. Chalabi will go on — as he has for more than a decade now — trying to establish freedom and democracy in his home country of Iraq. The more we see of it, the more we understand why those who oppose the spread of freedom and democracy in the Middle East are desperate to undermine him. They are worried that he might actually succeed.