Posted on 05/21/2004 9:16:55 PM PDT by Destro
Busted neo-con icon
Published: May 22 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: May 22 2004 5:00
The spectacular rise and sudden downfall of Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the Pentagon ideologues who launched the war in Iraq and saw him as its future leader, would look Shakespearean in its plot development were it not so shabby, and the irreducible reality of Iraq not so bloody and still so distant from catharsis.
Front pages across the world illustrated the drama through the splintered glass of a framed portrait of Mr Chalabi, smashed after US troops raided his Baghdad house on Thursday. As the ghost of Hamlet's father put it in a different context: "Oh what a falling off was there!"
Mr Chalabi's recent history in many ways encapsulates the delusionary nature of the US adventure in Iraq - not least because it was he who fed these delusions to his patrons at the Pentagon. Some of the most alarming stories the Bush administration passed on to its allies as intelligence - such as the one about Saddam Hussein's mobile biological weapons laboratories - were the fabrications of defectors supplied on demand by Mr Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress (INC). Colin Powell, the US secretary of state who repeated these assertions to the United Nations Security Council as justification for the war, earlier this month described that particular information as "deliberately misleading".
Mr Chalabi's claim that Iraqis would welcome US troops with flowers, moreover, played perfectly to the gullibility of the neo-conservatives in and around the Pentagon who had long been determined to invade Iraq and use it as a lever to reshape the Middle East. But if they were taken in by these stirring tales, it was and is their fault; the record of Mr Chalabi is no mystery.
The INC leader is a brilliant man who lobbied Washington with charm and conviction. A western-educated, secular member of Iraq's Shia majority, he must have seemed an ideal projection of Iraq's future after regime change, a seductive image confused as reality. It seems to have given no one pause that he had no standing in Iraq, which he left as a boy. Or, indeed, that he was best known in the region for the Petra bank fraud in Jordan, for which he was sentenced to 22 years in jail in 1990 (he fled the country to avoid imprisonment). He says he was set up by Saddam; that is not what knowledgeable bankers in Amman and Beirut say.
In 2001 the INC - which has received nearly $40m (£22.5m) from Washington - fell foul of a US audit reported to have uncovered expenditure on paintings for its offices and gym subscriptions for its staff. Now, it appears, the INC seems to have profited from last year's currency changeover in Iraq. Mr Chalabi, a gifted mathematician whose doctoral thesis was on Knot Theory, has left a lot of loose ends dangling in his controversial career.
Unsurprisingly, when the US flew him and his self-styled "Free Iraqi" militia into Iraq last year, those Iraqis who knew him were unimpressed. His part in persuading the occupation authority to dissolve the regular army, as well as a blanket purge instead of the selective rooting out of Saddam's henchmen, top the lengthy list of misjudgments of the past year. So bad has Mr Chalabi's relationship with his former patrons become that officials in Washington are accusing him of passing US intelligence to Iran.
Yet it would be quite wrong to make Mr Chalabi a scapegoat. Ultimately, he was the construct of geo-political fantasists in Washington, which is surely where the responsibility lies for his and their shortcomings.
Further back than that. In May '91, Geo. HW Bush directing the CIA to fund and support opponents of Saddam Hussein, and hopefully result in his removal. This opposition coalition became the Iraqi National Congress.
After Billy-Jeff came to office, the INC formed a new leadership council including Barzani and Chalabi.
We've been feeding this dog for over 13 years.
I hope so.
Well everyone knows you are a commie. LOL
You were married to Maureen Dowd??
Whatever happened to Boyd and Metalbird1?
And THE most famous stars,directors,and plays,of the Yiddish Theatre,were the know for the dramas.
The comedians like Molly Picon,who finally made the cross over to American theatre and movies,in middle/old age,were far and few between.
And noooooooooooooooooo...that wasn't "shtik";not even close.Frankly,I'm not quite sure just what it was,besides confusing and not funny.Are you aware of what "shtik" actually refers to? Can you give me an example,please?
a Neo-Con Post from another FR thread...'Madness of Empire...'
'Whose War?...A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest'...by Patrick J. Buchanan
'No End to War...The Frum-Perle prescription would ensnare America in endless conflict'...By Patrick J. Buchanan
I think since you like labels a good one for you and the views you espouse would be neo-liberal.
I am not sure why you do not understand that your views are those of the anti-American left.
See for example, "How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons " published in Salon more than two weeks ago for an earlier example of the propaganda you have regurgitated here. Salon of course is a bastion of conservative and right wing though, is it not?
Or in the current lefty free rag the LA Weekly, Conquest Games - Just when Iraq gets ugly, neocons talk of taking over the world" for another presentation of your views.
We all have our opinions and you are welcome to yours, as simple minded and based upon distortion and exageration as it is. But you should at least have the guts to recognize your views for the left-leaning folderol that they are.
actually one self confessed neocon David Horowitz is an admitted Red Diaper Baby.....I think his folks were Brighton Beach(?) active cell members.
I like him, he knows the left all too well (like me)....lol...I don't blame him for his parents.
I think most of the so-called "neo-cons" fit the definition. However; because the father was a communist it is NOT written that the son will be also, in fact many would say that the son would rebel against the father.
I'm waiting for the neocon Maoist brigades to show up and harangue me any minute now for being a counter revolutionary.
Rasish and Horowitz,who know each other from childhood,are two of the extremely RARE converts to Conservatism.
Irving Kristol is from an earlier generation and I don't think he was a RDB.And Bill,his son,can NOT be called a neo-con,because he was NEVER a Trotskyite,or even a Dem.
You could also answer some of the questions I long ago put to you.
No
(OK, so what does it mean?)
No purging of the NeoCons ... it's essential wa have plausible deniability for believing in the likes of "western-educated, secular member(s)" of Shias and other absurdities.
Senator Hollings and some of you seem to think the Jews influence America. The Jews can't control who gets on a bus and blows everyone to Kingdom Come.They have a lot of unemployment and money problems.
The wealthy and influential people in this country have ties to Saudi Arabia, not Israel. It is the Saudis who have the American lawyers, the public relations firms, the money to buy media, the oil companies, etc. It was Saddam who was paying off agents of influence in France, Russia, church circles (via the Russian Orthodox Church), the Middle East, Britain, Canada, America, etc., with the oil voucher money. Perhaps they even bought a US Senator. Even Saddam's bumbling spies should be able to buy a South Carolina racist.
Perhaps the price of having the oil production go up, getting European help before the election, and damping down the embarrassing-to-European oil voucher scandal was discrediting Chalabi and letting Brahimi take over. Maybe Chalabi isn't the "crook" that the Jordanians, the State Department and CIA claim he is. Mabye he does have information about the oil voucher scandal. If this comes out, the Euros won't help us solve the problems in Iraq.
Chalabi has told the CIA things that they ignored and this pissed them off.
Perhaps the White House is deciding to get out before the election and putting a smily face on it. After all, wasn't it Bremmer who said we would leave Iraq if asked?
We can't leave Chalabi in control because he won't be able to control the chaos. If we are leaving we need to leave in a Saddam with a human face. That would be Brahimi and the Arab nationalists. They will crack heads but nobody will want to notice.
Bush will get the oil; He will take the air out of Kerry's sails; and the Iraqi people will get whatever. Hopefully it won't be as bad as Saddam was.
And the Jews? Hopefully the Arab nationalist we are installing (again) will not be paying off suicide bombers to murder Jews. But I don't hold my breath. Sooner or later the Arabs will murder them all. And we will not help.
I guess Bush is going on TV and we will get the candy-coated version.
Senator Hollings and some of you seem to think the Jews influence America. The Jews can't control who gets on a bus and blows everyone to Kingdom Come.They have a lot of unemployment and money problems.
The wealthy and influential people in this country have ties to Saudi Arabia, not Israel. It is the Saudis who have the American lawyers, the public relations firms, the money to buy media, the oil companies, etc. It was Saddam who was paying off agents of influence in France, Russia, church circles (via the Russian Orthodox Church), the Middle East, Britain, Canada, America, etc., with the oil voucher money. Perhaps they even bought a US Senator. Even Saddam's bumbling spies should be able to buy a South Carolina racist.
Perhaps the price of having the oil production go up, getting European help before the election, and damping down the embarrassing-to-European oil voucher scandal was discrediting Chalabi and letting Brahimi take over. Maybe Chalabi isn't the "crook" that the Jordanians, the State Department and CIA claim he is. Mabye he does have information about the oil voucher scandal. If this comes out, the Euros won't help us solve the problems in Iraq.
Chalabi has told the CIA things that they ignored and this pissed them off.
Perhaps the White House is deciding to get out before the election and putting a smily face on it. After all, wasn't it Bremmer who said we would leave Iraq if asked?
We can't leave Chalabi in control because he won't be able to control the chaos. If we are leaving we need to leave in a Saddam with a human face. That would be Brahimi and the Arab nationalists. They will crack heads but nobody will want to notice.
Bush will get the oil; He will take the air out of Kerry's sails; and the Iraqi people will get whatever. Hopefully it won't be as bad as Saddam was.
And the Jews? Hopefully the Arab nationalist we are installing (again) will not be paying off suicide bombers to murder Jews. But I don't hold my breath. Sooner or later the Arabs will murder them all. And we will not help.
I guess Bush is going on TV and we will get the candy-coated version.
We all had our chance to vote for Buchanan.
Absolutely and ignores the philosophical underpinnings of the movement that are not necessarily Jewish.
Neoconservatism believes in Enlightenment principles.
This is also a slander.
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