JORDAN TIP EXPOSED CHALABI AS IRAN 'SPY'

Muslims have very strong loyalties to islam and they despise the west for it's cultural values and consider it a threat to the islamic world rule promised to them in the koran. The shiites have stong loyatlies to islam, but only stronger ones to iran. They want to see the islamic world united under and led by iran and pakistan, where again the shiites though a minority hold positions of influence.

They will conspire against another muslim only

i- If they consider him a threat to the islamic world.

ii- If they considers him divisive to the unity of the islamic world.

iii- If they're afraid that he knows too much.

iv- To make the west alienate him and use that alienation to draw him towards their islamic cause.

Chalabi is not an Iranian agent. He is not a Jordanian agent. And the woe of it all to the nimnuts at CIA is that he isn't an American agent either. And they just do not have any mental categories for what he actually is. The only thing they can slot it into is double agent.

He is a politician. He wanted a particular outcome in Iraq - a constitutional government with basic justice and the Baathists gone. Originally he thought the best way to get that would be a constitutional monarchy under a restored royal family - and worked with Jordan toward that end. This was a perfectly decent political goal. The Jordanians found it useful - until they sold out the idea to appease Saddam, state to state, instead of trying to change the Iraqi regime. Then they tossed Chalabi and smeared him on his way out.

So Chalabi came to us. But then we stopped and left Saddam in power rather than removing him - after calling on Chalabi's people to rise against him. 50,000 of his compatriots and supporters were killed by that little head fake on our part. He knew we had the power to remove Saddam. But we hadn't decided to do so. We seemed to want the shredders to remain on instead, to avoid the difficulties we face right now, and to keep Iranians out, and the like.

Chalabi would have to be an immoral fool to trust us - or Jordan - after that. But we were still indispensable. He needed our power to remove Saddam. And he needed some model of a secular republican Iraqi, which would need us as a patron. He could have burned bridges, but didn't. Instead he went over the CIA's head, to Congress, and lobbied for the Iraq liberation act and a US policy of regime change rather than the status quo.

He was not anybody's agent. He worked with whoever was opposed to Saddam. We only were at times; at other times, like Jordan, we appeased Saddam or made our peace with him or found him useful against somebody else. Chalabi wasn't waffling around, we were. He stood for the same thing for 20 years - a free Iraq. We didn't. Eventually we arrived there - and now the spooks who opposed our taking Saddam out (right up to the day of the invasion, CIA was opposed) blame Chalabi and the Iranians for "manipulating" us into it.

They simply had their own foreign policy, as an agency. That policy was - keep Saddam in power, in order to keep the shredders running and the Shia down, and thereby keep Iran out. That was the brilliancy we saw implimented in 1991. Just before the US invasion, they were saying Saddam is contained, he won't hurt anybody unless he is attacked, and if we attack him he will use WMDs and bring down the house along with him. You can look it up. That was the public position of the CIA. It's public position now - on the cover of Newsweek - is that the entire war was a mistake.

The double agents here are the US CIA. They don't work for the Bush administration. They are already presenting their bona fides to the Kerry administration.

My take on this whole thing is that the "spying" is probably nothing more than a smokescreen. The U.S. wanted to remove him from a position that he never should have been given in the first place, so they made this whole thing up (and curried favor with Jordan in the process).

The tip-off here is the nature of the accusation: that he was spying against the U.S. on behalf of Iran. This is important for two key reasons: 1) it makes his removal popular among U.S. voters; and 2) it is an accusation that is utterly irrelevant in any legal sense (because the U.S. has no jurisdiction in Iraq and doesn't really have the authority to do anything to him beyond what has already been done by raiding his home and office).

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