Free Republic

The State Department and the CIA seem to have grabbed the wheel at the New York Times, with successive front-page stories last week on Wednesday and Thursday, first smearing Iraqi Governing Council member and longtime U.S. ally Ahmed Chalabi, then his allies in the administration.Perhaps it sacrificed its journalistic integrity in exchange for the first pass at leaks from State and CIA, or perhaps the paper and the paper-pushers united because of a common goal: the defeat of George W. Bush this November.To appreciate how surreal the Times’ stories were last week, consider the underlying facts.  Chalabi is accused of...

June 3, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — FBI agents are focusing on a Pentagon intelligence-gathering unit in their probe into who told Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi that the United States had broken Iran's secret communications codes, The Post has learned. Word of the probe came as serious new allegations surfaced about the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group he heads. U.S. officials said the FBI counterintelligence investigation into the code breaking security breach is centered on a handful of civilian hard-liners in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, a policy- and intelligence-analysis shop set up after 9/11.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi said the raid on his compound Thursday was engineered by Baathists who control the Iraqi police and who are now protected by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Senior coalition law enforcement and justice officials said the raid on the compound of the Iraqi National Congress was part of an investigation of "suspected fraud in a government ministry." But Chalabi -- who is head of finance in the Iraqi Governing Council and leader of the INC -- was not named in the warrant. Iraqi police and U.S. military personnel who conducted the...

Shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein last December, the deposed Iraqi tyrant received a visit in his underground prison cell from a rotund, balding, 59-year-old former banker. Saddam immediately recognised Ahmed Chalabi, one of the leaders of Iraq's new interim administration, and greeted him with a sneer: "So, are you going to be the new ruler of Iraq?" he inquired. Chalabi, who had been taken to Saddam's secret prison cell by US troops to confirm the captured leader's identity, made no reply. "You don't take orders from a dictator and certainly not from a war criminal," he later explained.Nevertheless...

Iraq asset document listing Osama bin Laden

A GROUP of former US intelligence officials has written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war. The group’s members, most of them former CIA analysts, say that they have close contacts with senior officials working inside the US intelligence agencies, who have told them that intelligence was “cooked” to persuade Congress to authorise the war. The manipulation of intelligence has, they say, produced “a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions”. They write in the letter to Mr Bush: “While there have been occasions...

INTERVIEW-Sons' deaths 'a body blow' to Saddam -Chalabi By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, July 23 (Reuters) - Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi on Wednesday called the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons "a body blow" to the ousted dictator as it showed the Iraqi people he was powerless to protect them. Chalabi, in an interview, also denied the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, of which he is a member, was bogged down in factional fighting, saying it needed to get organized before it could choose a leader and get down to work. He himself was not a candidate to lead it, he...

1. Why American Chaos Reigns in Iraq Chaos continues to reign in Iraq because of the State Department's meddling, NewsMax has learned. A high-ranking Reagan administration official, who has talked to several Americans working in liberated Iraq, says the situation “is chaotic, and remains more chaotic than the press is reporting.” The culprit for the troubles: the State Department. As has been described to us, there is not one interim U.S. authority in Iraq, but two, one with orders from Foggy Bottom liberals who oppose President Bush, and the other from the Defense Department. A few weeks ago, the New...

After a U.S. Apache helicopter was shot down in northern Iraq on Thursday, a visiting Iraqi political leader told Daily Insight in Washington that U.S. field commanders have rejected proposals to establish an Iraqi security force under U.S. command that could have prevented this and other attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Leadership Council of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), told Insight in Washington that he repeatedly has proposed establishing an Iraqi force that would handle looters, battle remnants of the Ba'ath Party regime and help reduce U.S. casualties, but that U.S. commanders...

6pmLeaked emails add to NY Times' woes Ciar ByrneThursday May 29, 2003The GuardianCan the headlines get any worse for the New York Times? Once a beacon of US broadsheet journalism, the Times has already been rocked by charges of plagiarism, and now its rival the Washington Post has heaped on fresh embarrassment by reporting an unseemly squabble between two senior journalists on the paper.According to leaked emails seen by the Washington Post, the Times' Pulitzer prize-winning Baghdad bureau chief, John Burns, was in high dudgeon when another Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, Judith Miller, filed an interview with Iraqi exile leader Ahmed...

Baghdad crowd honors donkey, not Saddam, on strongman's birthday Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo! BAGHDAD (AFP) - Joyous crowds in Baghdad celebrated Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s birthday in a brand new way, pasting photos of the former strongman on a donkey as they heaped scorn on his brutal 24-year reign. AFP Photo Latest news: · Iraqi Delegates Gather for Gov't Talks AP - 4 minutes ago · Saddam's birthday still feted in Tikrit as others try to move onAFP - 21 minutes ago · Baghdad crowd honors donkey, not Saddam, on strongman's birthdayAFP - 23 minutes...

The man backed by many in the Bush administration to head Baghdad's postwar government said Sunday that documents uncovered over the weekend show that Saddam Hussein tried to recruit U.S. citizens to undermine the Bush adminsitration's war effort in Iraq. "We have captured a great many files of Saddam's services and there is astounding information about the extent of their networks and their efforts to recruit foreign nationals - including Americans - to work in the Mukabahrat [Iraqi intelligence service]," said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. "I think that this is something that must be pursued,"...

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein is on the run inside Iraq and hunters are less than a day behind him, an opposition leader insisted yesterday. Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress told BBC radio that the former dictator is being tracked by Chalabi's Free Iraqi fighters. "We are aware of his movements. We are aware of the areas that he has been to, and we learn of this within 12 to 24 hours," Chalabi said. "We will work to develop more information about his whereabouts." Chalabi's Free Iraqi forces may not have caught the deposed dictator, but they bagged another...

Chalabi denies being contender for top job Shyam Bhatia in Karbala exclusively for rediff.com | April 21, 2003 18:22 IST Ahmed Chalabi's denial that he is in the running for the top job in Iraq is a frank admission by the Pentagon's favourite candidate that there are other Iraqis better suited, better qualified and far more popular than he will ever be.In a city like Karbala, the majority Shia population's spiritual heartland, the very mention of Chalabi's name is guaranteed to start people laughing. And in a country where so many families have lost at least one loved one to torture...

One contender to be leader of a post-Saddam Iraq has said the UN has a limited role in the future of Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi, the Head of Iraqi National Congress, said the Iraqi people view the UN as allies of Saddam. He was interviewed by Jonathan Dimbleby: Jonathan Dimbleby: "You say that the United Nations should be kept out of this… but that suggests that you think that Britain and America are wrong to say that the UN should have a vital role in this process?" Ahmed Chalabi: "I that the UN has a limited role in Iraq. They have...

REBUILDING PLAN AGREED Free Iraqis have drawn up a 13-point plan to rebuild their country following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. The plan was agreed at US-hosted talks at Ur, the birthplace of the biblical prophet Abraham. The delegates also voted to meet again in 10 days' time. In a statement they said a future Iraqi government must be democratic, no leader must be imposed from outside, and the Baath party must be dissolved. As the meeting began, hundreds marched through the streets of nearby Nasiriyah protesting about US involvement in their country's future. They were concerned that the...

Pundits and reporters are being sold on the idea that Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader, is largely the creation of American neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz. They miss the point. Chalabi is so prominent in discussions of Iraq's future because for ten years he has been leading the central organization of Iraqis opposed to Saddam and the Baath regime. The Iraqi National Congress (INC) was founded by Chalabi in 1992 as an all-inclusive democratic opposition movement to remove Saddam and create a united federal government of laws in Iraq. The INC is not a faction or special-interest group seeking...

PARIS (Reuters) - Ahmed Chalabi, one of Iraq's best-known opposition leaders with strong support in the Pentagon, said in an interview published on Monday that he did not plan to play a political role in his homeland. "I want to take part in the reconstruction of the civilian society," Iraqi National Congress leader Chalabi told French daily Le Monde by phone from southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya. Chalabi said he had been "extremely well-received" in Iraq where he returned after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, but asked if he intended to play a political role there, he said: "Absolutely...

CHALABI CHATTER Like everybody else, I've been trying to get a handle on Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader, who some people would like to see as the new President of Iraq, despite some rough edges. Chalabi is also the focus of the latest unfortunately public Pentagon-State tiff. I must admit, it annoys me that he doesn't have a totally clean slate. Seems like it just makes things that much more difficult. The anti-war elites are in desperation mode because their "quagmire" predictions didn't materialize and they brought out the knives for this guy without skipping a beat (none...

Ahmed Chalabi, head of Iraqi National Congress and tipped to lead a post-war government in Iraq has said the Indian democratic system should be taken up as a model for his country, and expressed his desire to visit India. "Democracy in India is a marvel of civilization. We hope in some respects to have a political system similar to India," Chalabi, now involved in the US-led efforts to form a new interim government, told Third Eye TV, which covers the war for Doordarshan. Chalabi said the road to set up a proper democratic system akin to India would be completed...