Until then, it was a convenient association by all parties, not just DOD or Bush.
The New York Times sure loved Chalabi, didn't they?
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.
OK, fine. I will sent a e-mail to neocon headquarters and see if they have a membership list.
Now that you have defined neo-con...could you please list the top 5 neo-cons in the administration?
I thought OBL was more upset about infidels in Saudi and our general degeneracy than he was our support of the Zionists.
Patrick Lang evidently believes that the Likud party runs the US
In my best Yiddish accent - Runs? No! Influences? ehhhhhhhhhhhh (When I do this I sound like Gilbert Godfrey)
Until then, it was a convenient association by all parties, not just DOD or Bush.
The New York Times sure loved Chalabi, didn't they?
Pretty much - Yup.
The Times turned out to be his best advocate. LOL!
Well let's wait and see if the fall from grace has more to do with the State Department/CIA wing of the equation. The CIA is saying they have "rock solid" evidence of Chabili being Iranian spy but then again, the CIA/Tenet told Bush that WMD was a "slam dunk". Now if I have to place my trust in one either the defense department or the state department I choose the DOD without hesitation.
I think we all need to step back from being critical of anyone misled by these people.
To be fair and balanced.
Well you have your timeline a bit off. The Soviets turned tail and ran in 1989. It took 2 years for the Mujideen to take over from the Communist government, the Taliban was part of that movement, so between 1991 and 1996 the country was controlled by the various Mujideen factions under a figurehead premier. In 1996 the Taliban moved on the rest and took over from there. So your assertion that the Soviet backed government was in power for 10 years is incorrect. It lasted only 2 years after the Soviet withdrawal.
Want to know my views on Israel? I am on record as supporting a viable Israel with a complete and undivided Jerusalem as its capital. I think the best Israel can hope for is a somewaht stable short term (30 years) cease fire with Arabs in some future deal over the WestBank/Gaza. I don't think the neocon agenda of a democratic Iraq will bring peace for Isreal even if a democratic Iraq was viable. That is the key difference with those against the neo-cons. The neocons think they can remake the Arab world - by force if need be - into a world that wants to be like Israel and make peace with Israel.
My advice (which matters not at all of course) to Israel is to keep Jerusalem - leave the West Bank and Gaza and build a wall make plenty of babies and be ready for war - the only thing that brings peace.
I guess that makes Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg degenerate infidels, right?
I included the years after 1992 when when the Russian backed Northern Alliance formed from what was left of the government of Mohammad Najibullah and others held on to a quarter of Afghanistan.
excuse me....you lost me.
OBL was pretty clear that our support of Israel was secondary to his ire over our support of the Saudi royals and our having a military presence there.
Your first post indicated that you felt our support for Israel was the main cause...I disagree.
Then you just opined that Islamists like to kill Americans who happen to be Jewish (they will kill plain vanilla gringos too but what the hell).
I don't think anyone and not me for sure would argue that Islamists like killing Americans ...especially Jewish ones....but that was not your original point which I adressed nor was it ever my position.
Oh, you mean the mountains?
The mountains are in the South of Afghanistan mostly up north is more hilly and flat.
Nobody that I know!
Except for some red faces that gave him intel which he apparently gave to Iran in trade.
As I said, they trusted a Muslim who is bound by covenant to lie to infidels.
We just don't quite get it yet, but we are learning.
To be fair, Chalabi did not turn tail on us until just recently when he felt support beginning to slip.
Until then, he was probably fed misinformation to prove his complicity.
I bet, when it all shakes out, that nobody got hurt but Chalabi.
OBL never mentioned the Palestinian cause until after 911 if I recall correctly. Yes his stated reasons for his actions were troops in Saudi Arabia but even that is pure speculation. His entire motivation appears to be to kill infidels anywhere any place until all the world submits to Islam or die.
I never called you an anti-semite and I am one of the few relatively pragmatic FReepers who do not label Paleos as anti-semites or bigots (unless they persist).
Destro,
Lots of folks here revel in being Neos basically for good and at times maybe not so good reasons.
Your sounding the glee horn over Neos getting gored when you posted this thread was bound to stir folks up.
I think Israel should hold what they have and expel Palis to their homeland with the Hashemites.
I have doubts about Iraq and democracy....I would prefer to just see them obedient and harmless and compliant. I'm not sure W believes his platitudes about democracy over there or if it's just pr...whatever....what else can he say besides that? he can't very well just come out and say they are acting like savages and are incapable of representational government and so we are going to just pacify(try) the country and establish one big military base....lol....which we may do anyhow.
Iraq has always been and still is....a message to the Islamists and Rogue nations. A democracy there would be great someday...no doubt...however democracies as we know them and Islam seem to have a hard time converging.
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