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.
This whole Paleo versus Neo thing is really way overdone.
Most folks here are something of a hybrid between the two.
The rest of this squabble is just infighting crap with lots of innuendo and smearing that sounds like Dems or the Media talking about Republicans.
There are plenty like me who are Hawks (Neo) and Culture Righties (Paleo)....the whole affair is quite tiring.
We should all concentrate on the prize....not who is conservative enough or not.
The alternative is anthema for Neo or Paleo or Neleo
That would have been what 1993? LMAO.
I always thought it was that we simply outspent them....especially under Magnus.
Then you should know, that by your definition, Truman would be a Neocon. (Not very new is it)
Conservatives are not at all consistent in their views. Not even close.
These handles don't fit any group of conservatives. They are used to identify someone who you disagree with. That is all it is.
Not even the Libertarian can be viewed as group thinkers. No way in hell!
Many libertarians are not even conservative, they are radicals.
Why don't you just forget you ever heard the term, cuz most everyone else has.
The Soviets never recovered after their Viet-Nam.
Jimmy Carter,OTOH, is NOT a nedo-con,can NOT be called one,using ANY of the meanings of the term,whether valid or not.
It is arrogantly stupid to use a term,which has a set definition,to mean anything you want it to mean...and totally ignoring the original and set meaning.
To add insult to injury,you throw around events,jumbled then all together,and then attempt to make them appear to fit your positions;which they absolutely do not.
"BLOWBACK"? Yet another term you neither understand the meaning of,nor use correctly.
Let's see...blowback,mmmmm...bloooooooooooowbaaaaaaaaaaack. Are you claiming that the USA's aid to the Mujahadin helped UBL?It did no such thing and that has been discussed and debated and examined,for years on FR.But the tinfoilers still say it did,without a shred of proof and no facts to substantiate the claim.
Lebanon? Lebanon and "blowback"? Are you talking about the attack on the Marines,or something else?
Gee...didn't Reagan also "invade" a nation in our hemisphere too? And there was absolutely NO "b;owback" at all, from that one. Notice,please,I have not named the country,so please,without doing a Google,supply its name.I just want to see if you know what I'm talking about. :-)
Bingo!....which is why one hardly ever sees the Neo or Paleo label tossed sans acrimony on this forum.
The USSR would have fallen regardless of Afghanistan.
He has been in Washington for ten years or more with his group.
Ok you want to narrow it down? The Cheney and Rumsfeld and Perle and Wolfowitz wing of the White House has taken a blow with the fall of Chalabi from grace. Let us call this wing the "neocons" for matters of discussion.
But that's all they have, Battle Pop! These "conservative" sommeliers don't do anything but look down their noses at folks and name-call, all the while they can't get elected as a bathroom attendent in a cheap club.
It would be nice for once to hear them debate an issue wihtout resorting to epithets like "neocon." But I won't hold my breath waiting on them to do this. It just won't happen because they have nothing else.
All my slips belong to me.
I was responding to your post #13...in your "best Yiddish accent."
Are you saying our current Iraq mission is really linked to preserving the state of Israel?
If Israel didn't exist, do you think the islamofascists would be misbehaving like they are? After all, they've made friends with the Pope. And Billy Graham.
Apparently it's that Yiddish accent the evil-doers can't abide.
So the Taliban came into being in the mid 90's and the Afghan communists were in power up to that time?
Since the ORIGINAL and ONLY correct definition of the term neo-con,contains the fact that they are JEWS,and that LIBERALS and some on the right use that term to smear JEWS,then YES,it IS an antisemitic slur/code word;something which gets lost here,because so many are now using the term so blatantly incorrectly.It has NOTHING at all to do with Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson's race baiting tactics.
Not quite.
The first time I heard the phrase neocon was in regards to the so called conservative Republican politicians that completely ignore this epic invasion of our country by the endless millions of illegal aliens. While some of them try to convince others that millions of illegal aliens are good for us. LOL!
I'm afraid the term fits quite nicely.
You're playing right into your detractors hands.
I bet you Rummy, Cheney and Wolfie would have agreed with you on your Kososvo positions you're well known for here.
You should toss these group labelings and just criticize as you wish individuals for specifics.
And the Clinton defense won't work this time because the Clinton defense if thought out to its logical conclusion also hurts the necon's - For example: Why were they perpetuating Clintonian policy? - no defense possible - it gets you coming and going.
LOL! Only from a democrat perspective. They will try to make hay with it, but they are complicit in trusting him as well!
I think the choir is going to sing softly on this one.
Chalabi did not become a liability until he turned against the coalition and sought Iranian support for his run for president of Iraq.
Until then, it was a convenient association by all parties, not just DOD or Bush.
I would have never thought of Rummy as the stereotypical Neo as imagined around here.
He's not Jewish and he's not "Neo" as in new....but he sure is durable....more than many men half his age.
On the one hand I think of William Kristol as Neo and I usually like him except when he whines cause his boy lost waaay back.
On the other hand, I think of Neo as Conservative-Lite....and Cheney, Rummy and Wolfowitz are hardly that.
Again...it's always better to address specifics.
(I should follow my own advice at times...I know)
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