I know this comes as a shock. And has all you smart CIA and State Department weenies confused. But I think this is all a part of the simpleton W's grand strategery.
Posted on 02/20/2005 6:45:19 PM PST by Lessismore
Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi says he believes he has the votes to become the war-torn country's new prime minister.
Mr Chalabi, once supported by the United States only to fall from favour, is part of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list that won 140 seats of the 275-member national assembly in the January 30 elections.
"I believe I have a majority of the [UIA] votes on my side right now" to become the new government's prime minister, Mr Chalabi told United States ABC television.
However, the former exile remained cautious, saying the choice of premier "will be decided by the parliamentary bloc", which he did not want to "second guess".
On Tuesday, sources in the Shiite coalition said it had chosen interim vice president and Dawa party leader Ibrahim Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister.
Mr Chalabi said he was ready to cooperate if he were not picked to lead the government.
"We want to change the way Iraq is governed," he said.
"It will no longer be the government of a leader with everybody else not counting very much.
"We want to have a cabinet form of executive authority in Iraq and I am perfectly willing to cooperate, as indeed are my other friends and colleagues who are competing for the job of prime minister, with any prime minister that will come out for the service of ... the country."
Hasn't he recently blamed the uprising on the U.S.? So they end up with a guy who won't be accepted within Iraq, and is currently under indictment for fraud in Jordan.
This isn't good.
There are a large number of State Dept people that are not looking out for the US, IMO. Just look at how they keep pushing Israel to kiss the Palistinian's murdering behinds when the Palestinians have murdered almost 1000 Israelis in the past three years.
Yes, of course, I only know what I read or infer, and I'm aware that things like this are extremely difficult for an outsider to sort out. For instance, it's evident that things in the CIA and State are in a terrible mess, and that some players are willing to undermine our country in order to undermine Bush, but no outsider really knows who all the players are.
So maybe Chalabi is a bad guy.
Well, let's wait and see what happens. Maybe the rumor that he has the votes is false, too.
That says a lot about the man (and much more than the bureaucratic BS going on between our own Gov't agencies).
The Iraqis will decide. I still think Jafarri is the frontrunner, but it's their choice.
"If so, there are gonna be some red faces in Washington" ~ NorCalRepub
Only among the Bush haters that Porter Goss and Condi Rice haven't gotten around to getting rid of yet in the CIA and the State Department.
National Review Online February 08, 2005, 8:35 a.m.
http://www.nationalreview.com/lerner/lerner200502080835.asp
Chalabi Is Back - An apology is in order. - By Barbara Lerner
The Iraqi election was a moving display of courage and a great victory, for America, for Iraq, and for our much-maligned president. But when the full results of this historic election are released later this week, it's a safe bet that we will find ourselves having to deal, once again, with another much-maligned man: Ahmed Chalabi.
And since our CIA and State Department did the maligning, Chalabi's expected election victory presents what diplo-speakers call "a challenge."
Chalabi is a longtime Iraqi leader, a secular Shiite coalition builder, before the war and after.
His prewar coalition, the INC, brought Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish anti-Saddam resistance parties together. Later, he played a role in mediating an armed conflict between the two main Kurdish parties, leading to a peace agreement that still holds.
His postwar coalition, Grand Ayatollah Sistani's United Iraqi Alliance, is struggling to bring rival Shia religious parties together in a way that Sunnis, secular Iraqis, and Kurds can live with.
The UIA is the odds-on favorite to emerge with the most seats when the votes are counted, and Chalabi is number 10 on their list.
He will be a key figure in the new, 275-member Iraqi national assembly (who has spoken out against an Islamic republic). So it's a bit awkward that in the months leading up to the election, we tried to drive this man out of the country.
Our spooks and diplomats convicted him in the old media but in no court of a variety of crimes; invaded his home and office with American troops and the police of our Iraqi appointees; searched his premises, roughed up his staff, and threatened to arrest him and several of his relatives and friends if he didn't leave Iraq.
We were tougher on him than on murderous little Muqtada al-Sadr, but Chalabi didn't run.
He stayed, fought the charges legally, campaigned peacefully, and won.
Despite this history, it is not yet clear whether his victory will turn out to be a good or a bad thing, for us and for the Iraq we hope to see. What is clear is that we have new leadership now, at CIA and State, and it's in our interest to rethink our relations with Chalabi.
To do that, we must look anew at the three main charges leveled against him, and at the evidence for them.
Charge one is that Chalabi is an out-of-touch exile phony, an upscale con-man with no accurate information about today's Iraq, no base of support inside the country, and no significant allies there.
His only real allies, our experts at CIA and State kept telling us, are naive neocon civilians at the Pentagon: Chalabi suckered them by feeding them lies they wanted to hear about the possibility of a democratic Iraq, free from old hatreds and conspiracy theories about America and Israel.
The first two parts of this charge are clearly false. General Richard Myers is no neocon, and even as the leakers at CIA and State were telling any journalist who would listen that Chalabi's information was no good, Gen. Myers was quietly reporting that the intelligence our commanders in the field got from Chalabi was very good.
The claim that Chalabi has no base of support in Iraq and no significant allies there will, likely, be put paid by the election results, and by his continuing relationships with Sistani, with the Kurds, and other Iraqi players.
The claim that Chalabi was insincere when he spoke of his hopes for a democratic, pro-American Iraq, unshackled from the old Arab League hate-propaganda and failure-excuses, is different. On this point, the available evidence is not yet sufficient. Even if he meant it when he said it, it's not clear if he still does, or if our moves against him have left him bitter and vengeful. Here, Ronald Reagan's advice is best: Trust, but verify.
Charge two is that whatever his political views, Chalabi can't be trusted because he's a thief and a crook, guilty of counterfeiting in Iraq, and bank fraud in Jordan. Again, the first part of this charge is simply false; the second is unproven.
The counterfeiting charge stems from the fact that when our agents searched his premises, they found a small stack of fake banknotes with the word "counterfeit" stamped on them in red. This is hardly surprising: Chalabi was head of the finance committee in the Iraqi governing council and, if he intended to pass fake notes, it's unlikely he'd have stamped them as such.
The bank-fraud charge is based on the fact that Chalabi was convicted of that crime in absentia in Jordan in 1992. To evaluate it, it's essential to consider some basic facts about Jordan that are persistently ignored in the media.
Jordan has a relatively friendly ruling dynasty the Hashemites but it is not a friendly country. In opinion polls, Jordan's population routinely scores near the top in hostility to America. The opposite is true of Saddam Hussein. He was, and to some extent remains, popular on the Jordanian street, and in many elite circles too.
Add the fact that, despite large infusions of American aid, Jordan's weak economy is heavily dependent on trade with Iraq, and it's obvious that few Jordanian bankers supported the sanctions on trade with Iraq.
Consider, too, the fact that Jordan's courts have none of the independence we associate with American courts, and it's easy to see how a lone, anti-Saddam banker in Jordan might be convicted on less than compelling evidence.
Crown Prince Hassan, for one, was not impressed.
The prince has a long record as the most pro-American, least anti-Israel member of the Hashemite dynasty, and Chalabi escaped arrest in Jordan because Hassan drove him out of the country in his own car.
More recently, in Iraq, it was Chalabi who made the first big move to expose U.N. Oil-for-Food corruption by hiring the American accounting firm, KPMG International-al, to audit records he uncovered.
Why Paul Bremer, our former viceroy, rushed to cancel that contract is not yet clear, but on its face, it raises more questions about Bremer than Chalabi.
In sum, it is unreasonable to insist that Chalabi's corruption is an established fact. There may be some legitimate questions here but, without credible evidence, this charge, too, must be regarded as unproven.
Charge three is that Chalabi is a traitor who deliberately fed us false information before the war, lying to us about Saddam Hussein's WMDs and about the way the Iraqi people would respond to an American invasion.
Chalabi's enemies at State and CIA claim he did this to sucker us into invading Iraq, and then betrayed us by telling Iranian spies we had broken their secret communication code. Here, the first point to note is that Chalabi cannot be "a traitor," because he is not an American.
He's not an obedient American agent either. Our CIA tried to force him into that mold before the war, but failed.
They planned an uprising in the Kurdish north, and they didn't take it kindly when Chalabi said: 'Abort it; your security has been breached and if you go ahead, Saddam will crush it.'
His advice was rejected, but events proved him right, and that made him persona non grata to CIA experts with egg on their faces.
As a result, it is ludicrous to assert that when George Tenet assured President Bush that Saddam's possession of WMDs was "a slam dunk," he did so because he trusted Chalabi.
The CIA was contemptuous of him, and of his claim that a majority of Iraqis hated Saddam and would welcome his overthrow but, once again, the facts proved Chalabi correct.
Finally, in evaluating claims that Chalabi told an Iranian spy we had broken their code, consider the fact that we supposedly learned this because the Iranian reported it to Tehran, using you guessed it that very same code.
To believe that they would do this, instead of using the compromised channel to pass us disinformation, you have to believe Iranian intelligence agents are dumber than rocks, and the likelihood of that is near zero.
All in all, it is in America's interest to explore the possibility of a new relationship with a newly empowered Ahmed Chalabi, because clinging to the old slanders is more likely to damage us than him.
An apology for having maligned him unfairly in the past would be a good way to start. ~
*
On 12-01-2004, I posted this:
In the interview O'Reilly did with him Monday night, which I videotaped, Richard Perle said this: "Secretary Colin Powell, the State Department and the CIA - not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - are responsible for the chaos that has grown out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
*
Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation
National Review Online ^ | April 30, 2004 | Barbara Lerner
Posted on 05/01/2004 3:36:35 PM EDT by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127955/posts
"... First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. .." [snip] Click above link to read article.
My reply # 6 in that thread:
"The Foggy Bottom Swamp (State Department) will begin to be DRAINED when Bush is re-elected in a landslide."
The State Department’s War With the White House 4/27/04
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1125170/posts
6 posted on 05/01/2004 3:56:29 PM EDT by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127955/posts?page=6#6
Perle: Rumsfeld Opposed, Powell Wanted Occupation
Newsmax Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/11/30/80903.shtml
Chalabi may be counting votes as well as he provided information to the U.S. prior and subsequent to the war.
BS buried in some truth.
I know this comes as a shock. And has all you smart CIA and State Department weenies confused. But I think this is all a part of the simpleton W's grand strategery.
If our NATION can elect a BILL CLINTON.......TWICE.......Iraq can certainly have a PM in Chalabi as a result of it's FIRST free election!!!
I think that was a crapola charge cooked up by some of the boys at CIA/State cabal. The same type of people that were always against the Iraqi invasion to begin with. The same type of guys Poter Goss had to clean out when he got to the CIA. Chalabi is still very much pro-American. On election day in Iraq he was crediting the vote taking place because of the death and sacrifices incurred by US soldiers. So I wouldn't be very worried.
Chalabi, the maligned man? She wishes to rehabilitate Iago and blame others. Good Luck
Maybe that is what the special forces people have to say so chalabi can again look like not a puppet of the US.
Nope. That type of gobbledygook strategery happens well above their pay grade. Shooters don't participate in it -
Bingo.
Excellant point....that whole turn aorund thing with him..hmmmm.
and where did you read about this? Is there an article on the net somewhere with quotes from special forces?
Our special forces teams wouldn't be talking. Did you hear that from Seymour Hersh?
Jordan- the country most enjoying the benefits of the Oil for Food scam? The country whose politicians and press were bought off by Saddam Hussein?
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