Posted on 05/22/2004 11:17:27 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The Euro money houses....Insurance/Re-Insurance..banking with connections to IMF/World bank...Shipping..on and on ,
are pleased as punch with the fiscal return and futures .as the oil/gas makes its way to the Orient....the world synergy play of out time.
Here..the U.S. has quietly set up shop in so many **Stans,with thier transpipelines connected to the Caspian....the Huge Turkish terminals etc.
Not a peep from Europe..except a few murmurs from Russia.
The consortiums involved with the Islamic nations have to grease palms...give sparkly trinkets etc.
It is working....the front monies do not compare to the end net return.
Iraq is still in transition..its gonna be years to get oil flowing properly.
The U.S. Admin would like to have a few military bases in Iraq...out there in the desert.
U.S. oil firms...BP and Dutch Royal Shell,
waiting for Iraq to settle out into something.
Sistani can give the U.S. the stability in the south for the oil concerns.....problem is..will iran leave things be?
Sunni's in their extortion machinations have to get something....they have Kofi Annan and Brahimi schemeing 24 on their behalf.
Islam is well versed in extortion....add to that ..Russia,China and Frances advising/tampering.
Saudi'd would love Iraq to devolve into some scalable civil unrest...anything to keep Iraqs oil production potentials down.
Recently...Khazakstan started to balk at the pre arranged deal they had...Secretary Rumsfeld paid a visit..read them the riot act.
Caspian oil/gas is to critical in the Orient money play.
Jealous Saudi's on the periphery,
Jealous Iran,
France...getting some from Total Fina's holdings in Caspain..but wanting more.
The U.S. is doing way to much for the world on this one...other nations are hardly getting out of their chairs.....making huge coin.
I doubt he's guilty as portrayed. And when we learn the source of the allegation he's an Iranian spy comes from Jordan, its clear its part of Washington's effort along with the Sunni Arab regimes to cut Iraq's majority Shia Muslims down to size. I don't think they will just take it sitting there. And don't forget the Kurds. If Washington continues going down this road, the breakup of Iraq may come sooner than any one realizes.
Interesting, thanks!
"There is every indication that he is a crook"
One what basis? The same media sources that told us we hit a 'wedding' in the middle of the desert a few weeks back?
Pat Lang as a source? The guy feeding the talking points to the Democrats? The *former* CIA guy? Which means (a) he's a Clintonista type and (b) he either doesnt have current facts or is getting them from people who are violating security rules. hmmmm.
The eagerness of the liberal media to dump on this guy only makes me more suspicious.
Ah, well you might be on to something.
When we treat our enemies with kid gloves even while they provoke us horribly, and give our friends and our own allies the third degree over minor faults, then the message is clear:
Safer to be an enemy of us than a friend to us.
No wonder we have trouble keeping friends in places like Iraq. The policy is inverted.
Well damn those Iraqi judges. They are always ordering American military units around aren't they?
Hmmm... I wonder who might have told Sly Sy that Rumsfeld ordered the torture... Hmmm... Who could it be?
About the Advisers
Toward a More Secure America, the most recent report of the Secure America project, grew out of discussions with a team of former national security and foreign policy officials held at the Washington office of the Fourth Freedom Forum in the summer of 2003. The paper was written by the staff of the Fourth Freedom Forum and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, who are solely responsible for the report’s specific content. The authors incorporated numerous comments and suggestions from the policy advisers.
The policy advisers listed below endorse the general thrust of this report and generally agree with the findings presented.
[SNIP]
Morton H. Halperin
[SNIP]
Anthony Lake
[SNIP]
Robert McNamara
[SNIP]
Joe Wilson
Gaffney is most credible.
My gut instinct tells me that this is a set up against Chalabi, or maybe worse, i.e. our intel services are so penetrated that they are now under the influence of our enemies. Take Chalabi out of the equation using a U.S. backed effort and Iraqi's think even less of us not to mention driving stake into one of the three groups that have to be sucked up to. Seems like a recipe for whipping up more trouble.
"A surefire way to make it certain that the government wouldn't last is to put him in charge." - DIA analyst Patrick Lang
"If we pulled out he wouldn't last two hours, He's like Rockefeller. He couldn't be president. He's a rich boy." - former CIA agent Bob Baer
"The question is: Who is manipulating whom? ...It has been a marriage of convenience." - Clinton national security adviser Tony Lake
"People say I want to be anointed. That is the kiss of death. The U.S. ends up killing people they install." - Ahmed Chalabi
Regarding the CIA:
The INC wanted to stage a popular insurrection; the CIA wanted to plan a military coup. Each thought the other was misguided. Eventually the CIA lost faith in Chalabi and severed its connection to him. Meanwhile, working with another exile group, the Iraqi National Accord, the CIA enlisted a group of generals in Hussein's army to stage its coup. Chalabi says he learned that the attempt had been compromised and came to Washington in 1995 to warn the agency.Perle was his messenger. "The agency did not take it seriously," Perle says today. Shortly thereafter, about 200 Iraqi officers were imprisoned, tortured and executed by Hussein's regime.
After that, Chalabi called the CIA and "told them to go to hell." He was so outraged that he told the story to The Washington Post and ABC News. He claims the CIA never forgave him. "They looked bad. They went nuts."
"It was a disaster, and they were angry with the man who warned them," says Perle. It was then, he says, "that the CIA started circulating the rumor that Ahmed betrayed the coup." Perle says he's talked with CIA Director George Tenet about this, and that Tenet has not provided any evidence to support the allegation.
Bob Baer, the former CIA agent who worked with Chalabi at the time, also says there is no truth to the allegation leveled by other agents that Chalabi betrayed the coup attempt. Furthermore, he says, the CIA made a mistake when it dumped Chalabi, for strategic reasons alone. The way things work in Washington, he points out, if Chalabi didn't have the CIA to go to, he would turn to Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. "You don't want that to happen if you're the CIA," he says. "You don't want separate channels to the White House. The CIA alienated him and that was a huge mistake."
On the Jordanian connection:
The Jordanians have gone so far as to accuse Chalabi of responsibility for the car bomb that destroyed the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad in August, killing 17. Says Karim Kawar, the Jordanian ambassador to Washington: "We have reason to believe he is involved. We are awaiting an investigation to be concluded. Our intelligence tells us he might have had a hand in it."
Gee, I wonder if Jordanian intelligence has any "unnamed sources" in the Chalabi fan club.
Pat Lang put in his two cents on Plame too. - "I think it is inherently irresponsible to disclose the true identity of a covered DO [directorate of operations] officer. It's a frivolous and irresponsible act."SOURCE
Regarding this part:
After that, Chalabi called the CIA and "told them to go to hell." He was so outraged that he told the story to The Washington Post and ABC News.
I'm wondering who at the Post Chalabi went to? Pincus? Maybe there's an old Post article which would have this information?
I say we instill a 90-day election cycle after the handover on 30 jun. That's what the Weekly Standard is now advocating.
from the same report:
A top CIA covert operative -- known to the Iraqis as "Bob" and not further identified in this account because he is still in covert service with the CIA -- designed what the Iraqis called the "Bob plan" for a direct attack on the Iraqi army in March 1995. The goal was to demonstrate the rebels' strength and, hopefully, highlight the unwillingness of Iraqi troops to fight to defend Saddam. Marik and "Bob" were the two principal CIA agents working in northern Iraq with the National Congress rebels.According to Chalabi, the "Bob plan" included a secret contact with Iran -- a neighbor and bitter foe of Iraq -- seeking Iranian complicity in the Iraqi rebel attack. But Washington quickly disavowed that message and withdrew support for the operation.
(snip)
Gradually "the Bob plan," named after the blond, blue-eyed, 6-foot-tall agent who elaborated it, came into being, with a target date of March 4, 1995, for a coordinated strike on the garrisons of Mosul and Kirkuk by 20,000 Kurdish guerrillas, 1,000 National Congress soldiers and 1,000 armed followers of the Iraqi Communist Party, according to Gen. Wafiq Samarrai, Saddam's former chief of military intelligence. He defected to the National Congress in 1994 and directed the offensive.
"We wanted Saddam to go on full alert, to try to fight back and see that his units would not fight for him," Chalabi says.
According to Chalabi, on Feb. 27 "Bob" asked him to use his contacts with Iran's ruling ayatollahs to pass a message saying Washington would look with favor on Iran moving troops along its border to distract Saddam as the offensive began.
"Bob" could not meet the Iranians himself. But Chalabi says the CIA agent stood in the hallway of the Khadra Hotel in Salahuddin as two Iranian intelligence operatives filed into Chalabi's room to be given what they were told was a message from the White House. "They had to see an American there or they wouldn't believe it," says Chalabi. "Their eyes were popping out of their heads."
U.S. officials would not comment on that description. But two administration officials confirm what Chalabi says happened next, apparently after communications intercepts of Iranian messages alerted the White House to the "Bob plan."
On March 3, they said, "Bob" and another agent showed up with a three-point message for Chalabi. One: Your operation has been penetrated and there is a risk of failure. Two: If you go ahead, it will be without U.S. involvement or support. It is your decision. Three: There is only one place for contact between Iran and the United States, and it is not in northern Iraq.
The effect of the message was to split the Kurds, who received a separate briefing on it. One Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, would not commit his forces to fighting the Iraqi army, and the offensive failed. In August 1996, he invited Saddam's troops into the north to help break up the CIA-backed operation.
"I know other people in the agency disagree with me and saw the [National] Accord operation as a prudent hedge," Marik says. "But I feel that we got too impatient with a genuine effort to install democracy and turned instead to fighting Saddam with incompetent Saddams, who are headed for the dust heap of history."
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Chalabi’s strategy was to create a viable political and military organization by uniting the Kurdish factions and recruiting as many disaffected Iraqis to the INC as possible.He enlisted former Iraqi Gen. Adnan Nuri as a important ally, but the CIA later recruited Nuri to lead a rival opposition group based in London, The Iraqi National Accord. On the eve of the March 1995 offensive, Nuri flew to Washington and told the White House that the INC had tricked the CIA and was preparing to draw the United States into a new war with Iraq—something he knew the Clinton administration would avoid at all costs.
Washington cabled Chalabi to inform him that the United States “will not support this operation militarily or in any other way.” The attack went forward, but quickly unraveled without American support.
(snip)
The Accord was organized by by the British intelligence agency MI6 after the Gulf War. It gained support within the CIA’s London station later that spring as Bush administration officials looked for a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Among its leaders is Gen. Adnan Nuri, a former brigade commander in Saddam’s special forces. He joined the Iraqi National Congress in May 1992, but was recruited a month later to work secretly for the CIA within the Accord.
“They said: ‘You work separate from the INC, but don’t resign from the INC’,” Nuri told ABCNEWS.
Nuri later convinced the Clinton White House to abandon the CIA-backed INC only hours before it was to begin a March 1995 offensive aimed at toppling Saddam.
By that time, President Clinton was already favoring the Accord members predictions regarding the possibility of sparking a coup and turning cold to the potential complications of a popular insurrection in Iraq. By the summer of 1995, Washington’s efforts concentrated on working with King Hussein of Jordan and the Accord’s new offices in Amman. - ABC
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Chalabi had written in his war plan that if there was "no movement" and if Saddam was permitted to export oil, "then the psychology of the people will turn. Saddam will appear to open [for] them hope for the future. At that point he will have escaped." A month after the failed insurrection, the United Nations Security Council allowed Iraq to resume oil sales under its Oil for Food program, insuring a flow of money to the regime. - New Yorker
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The DBACHILLES debacle began in 1994. The CIA around that time appointed a new head of its Near East Division named Stephen Richter, whose identity was long ago published. He and a former Army officer who headed the agency's Iraq task force believed that a military coup against Hussein was possible.The CIA's new Iraq team is said to have met soon afterward with Gen. Mohammed Abdullah Shawani, a former commander of Iraqi Special Forces. A Turkmen from Mosul, Shawani had many contacts in the Iraqi military, including several sons still in uniform. Shawani's name has previously been published, too.
As the CIA was drafting its plans, the British encouraged the agency to contact an experienced Iraqi exile named Ayad Alawi, who headed a network of current and former Iraqi military officers and Baath Party operatives known as Wifaq, the Arabic word for "trust."
Complicating the CIA's coup planning was a similar effort in northern Iraq by Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. A CIA officer named Bob Baer was dispatched in January 1995 to coordinate the various covert efforts, but they only got more tangled. Chalabi launched his unsuccessful coup in March 1995, and Baer was suddenly summoned home to Washington.
The 1995 fiasco only reinforced the CIA's belief in the traditional military coup approach of DBACHILLES. But an Iraqi source argues that by late 1995, some of Shawani's and Alawi's operatives were already controlled by Iraqi intelligence.
Chalabi was so convinced that the military-coup plan had been compromised that he traveled to Washington in March 1996 to see the new CIA director, John Deutch, and his deputy, George Tenet. He told them the Iraqis had captured an Egyptian courier who was carrying an Inmarsat satellite phone to Shawani's sons in Baghdad.
When the CIA officials seemed unconvinced, Chalabi went to his friend Richard Perle, a prominent neoconservative. Perle is said to have called Tenet and urged that an outside committee review the Iraq situation. But the coup planning went ahead.
DBACHILLES collapsed in a blood bath in June 1996. The Post had run a front-page story on June 23 describing Alawi's role in "the latest CIA-backed plan" that was based on "contacts at high levels of the Iraqi military."
The Iraqis are said to have begun arresting the coup plotters three days later, on June 26. At least 200 officers were seized and more than 80 were executed, including Shawani's sons. Top CIA officials blamed Chalabi for exposing the plot, and the recrimination has persisted ever since. - WP
Short version: Chalabi is abandoned in 1995 at the behest of the leader of the Jordan-based Baath-infiltrated Accord. Chalabi is later blamed for CIA failure when the Baath-infiltrated operation collapses, apparently from being exposed by a June 23 front page Post story on "the latest CIA-backed plan".
Now Peter Spiegel in Washington and James Drummond in Baghdad tell us he said: Gen Myers' comments reflect the personal support that Mr Chalabi enjoys in some sections of the administration, particularly the Pentagon. However, this support has been overriden by the importance attached to the political process by Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations special envoy to Iraq. To them, Mr Chalabi has come to be seen as an obstacle to UN plans to form a caretaker government to assume sovereignty.
If General Meyers had said: "Mr. Chalabi is an honest and trustworthy person," then I would wonder if General Myers had been reading his mail. But, I agree with what he actually said. It is the reporter's interpretation that is suspect. As for Frank Gaffney Jr., your right, he obviously hasn't been reading the mail.
I know which side I'm on. Those who supported this war from the beginning are defending Chalabi now. (Only against rumors, he hasn't been charged with anything.) Those who opposed this war from the beginning want revenge on the man who, in their Anti-Zionist conspiracy theories, fomented it.
This is all about removing an obstacle to the impending criminal UN rule of Iraq.
Thanks much for summing all that up--that gives me a better picture. Some questions that raises for me (BTW not expecting you to answer all these, just voicing them aloud FWIW, though of course if you have insight into any of this I'd be interested to hear your thoughts):
I see the timing of the failed coup coincided with developments in the Oil For Food program. Did anyone involved in the failure of the coup planning later benefit from the Oil For Food bribes?
Who was Stephen Richter aligned with in CIA and State?
Was Clinton's ambassador to Jordan involved in any of these events? Likewise, were any Clinton diplomats involved in Iran affairs involved in these events? (I word it that way because I don't believe Clinton had an ambassador to Iran--don't think we've an embassy in iran since Carter?--I don't see an embassy to Iran listed on the State Department's website: http://usembassy.state.gov/ .)
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