Posted on 05/25/2004 1:20:46 PM PDT by RandyAndy
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday May 25, 2004
The Guardian
An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.
Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.
According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.
The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi's contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands.
The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war.
"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."
Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy." [... article continues]
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
In exactly seven minutes from now, every liberal in the country will believe this more fervently than they believe the sun will rise tomorrow.
What really matters is what the Iranian people know....and that is this.
Since the 13 months after the fall of Saddam's Baathist regime, the Iraqi people have more political freedom, economic opportunity and hope for the future than the Iranians have 25 years after the fall of the Shah.
Once this sinks in aropund the middle east, President Bush will look more the hero in the broad sweep of history.
Who was giving Chalabi all the classified information?
The fever swamps are bubbling again.
Very clever. Now if we could goad China into invading Canada that would... oh... you mean Iran might not LIKE having U.S. infantry and armor on the ground, well-supplied, right next door?
I don't disbelieve the fact that chalabi could be an iranian agent.
Muslims have such strong loyalties to islam that they invariably are double agents.
If a muslim isn't working for iran, he could be working for Pakistan or saudi arabia, the two al qaeda sponsors and countries with direct ties to 911.
However the fact of the matter is that we should do what's good for us, regardless of the facts about chalabi.
we didn't have conclusive evidence to prove that Iraq didn't have WMD's. As you can see al qaeda's zarqawi seems pretty busy in iraq these days.
There is a very strong possibility that Saddam could have had some WMD's, as he had been fooling inspectors for years. Considering that fact that zarqaqi is in iraq, it is very likely that these ould fall into al qaeda's hands.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary and against the backdrop of 911, we had no choice but to move against iraq.
We just couldn't sit, pray and hope that saddam didn't have WMD's and that he didn't have al qaeda ties.
We can pay them back by using their trickery as a pretext for ridding the world of THEM.
FREE IRAN!
No duping required ....
N. Korea nuke material -> Libya
Pakistan nuke centrifuges -> Libya
Iraqi money and scientists -> Libya
Libya builds the hollowed out mountain nuke facility.
Presto, Islao-facists nuclear bomb.
We have most of the pieces under control.
It's all hooked together. Stay tuned.
Anyone who thinks the Iranian ayatollahs would work to establish the precedent of U.S. military pre-emption in the Middle East is clearly on crack.
I was in military intelligence and I can tell you, we went to a LOT of trouble to keep secret things secret. Folks who spin fanciful intelligence tales are, imo, very seldom credible.
second that emtion
Doesn't this all fly in the face of Clarke and Woodward's statements about all this? Weren't Bush and Company going to war reagardless? Now it's all the Iranians and Chalabi? When are the moonbats going to settle on one story?
You nailed it. I can't believe the stupid ideas that get published. Let's see. The President labels Iran part of the Axis of Evil. Then Iran sets up the pretext for the US to station 130,000 troops in the country next door. Iranians are oppressed, not stupid.
Besides, a fat, drunken, lying, murderous Senator from Massachussetts told me this was planned in Texas a long time ago.
If muslims lived in wealthier, educated, industrialized societies, it would have been the islamic reich and a menace to the world
Saudi arabia is wealthy. Iran was wealthy till we sanctioned it. Libya is wealthy.
Surprising these countries are the main sponsors of terror.
Surprising how pakistan and iran were peaceful countries, till aid money got to them and then boom they turned fanatic and violent overnight didn't they?
I'd say it had to do with the money.
I mean if hitler was the ruler of bangladesh, could he have been a threat?
i suppose its the wealth, industrial and scientific might of germany that turned him into a menace.
any thoughts to disprove this?
We are not just next door, we are on both sides of Iran.
Well i like your stuff on libya..we could come up with similar stuff for pakistan.
pakistan nuke material--> libya, iran and north korea.
pakistan terror- --->taliban, al qaeda, chechens, indian terrorists, bosnians.
pakistan---> still making nukes, no inspections and no roll back.
Iran terrror-----> hamas, hizbollah, islamic jihad, cuba, colombia
Iran nuclear-----> hurriedly on its way.
iran political-----> generous donations to both the liberals and the nazis in the west.
saudi arabia terror---> al qaeda, taliban, wahhabis
saudi arabia religious----> funds most islamic political parties and generous donations to both the nazis and the librals.
Libya terror----> abu nidal, PFLP etc etc etc
Syria terror---> hizbollah and numerous palestinian groups.
I have no doubt that Iranian and Iraqi intelligence operatives were passing info of varying degrees of value on to the US. As were any Kuwaiti, Saudi, Jordanian, Turkish, Armenian, Israeli, French, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Belgian, British, and American operatives in the region. Let's not forget Pakistani, Chinese, Bahraini, Oman, UAE intelligence who were also sifting through this mountain of BS taller than the original tower of Babyl.
Iraqi scientists and military and intelligence and Secret police chiefs regularly lied to the Hussein family to keep their heads on their necks, and their must be millions of reams of "fancied up" bureaucracy paperwork to back up their pie in the sky reports to the Hussein clan. If the US was collecting leaked documents, than it's safe to assume Iran was too. Which means Iranians could create even wilder claims in forged, faked papers, and pass them on to the Western intel operatives.
Like posted, Iran wanted to keep Saddam supressed by the UN, weakening the regime over decades so when Saddam fell, Iran would increase it's territory be leveraging the sphere of influence. The US military has speed up the timetable, neutralized the possibility that Iraq would slowly fall in to complete disrepair and a collapse of government after Saddam's eventual death. The US will be Iraq's pillar of stability, not Iran. Iran miscalculated, based on Bush the Elder's decision to let Saddam live the first time, and Clinton's weak arsed oblivious foreign policy decisions.
All old news, Chalabi was known to be a conduit for many different organizations.
Hey, trying to understand from the outside who is sticking it to who in all the give and take in the intelligence community, is like trying decipher some meaning behind what goes on in a Frisco bath house.
Well the iranians have been trying to get rid of saddam for the past 20 years.
What you see in iraq, is exactly what iran wanted.
They've got saddam out and yet given us a bloody nose to put a stop to our adventurism.
This has let iran install a shiite govt in iraq and getting the US kicked out to leave iran as the dominant player in ira.
It is rumoured that iran, even eased al qaeda's zarqaqi into iraq, the man responsible for most of the recent violence
But i still don't know if chalabi is being framed by muslims for being too pro america or if he's really a spy.
I suppose it would depend on his views regarding our plans for a future invasion of iran. If he opposed it then he is an iranian spy.
Muslims have strong loyalties to islam, while shiites have strong loyalties to islam, yet even stronger ones to iran.
The islamic world is so crooked and treacherous, it's very hard to tell.
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