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In an indication of their growing estrangement with the Bush administration, neoconservatives are slamming the White House for failing to stop what they describe as an antisemitic campaign to marginalize them being conducted by the CIA and the State Department. This view was outlined in a memo circulating among neoconservative foreign policy analysts in Washington. Obtained by the Forward, the memo criticizes the White House for not refuting press reports on the FBI's investigation of Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin that suggest wrongdoing on the part of Jewish officials at the Defense Department. "If there is any truth to any of...

We don’t live in a racially neutral society: from police officers to headteachers, all the gatekeepers in my life have been white. Yet we do have to acknowledge those who feel they lose out to ethnic minorities Most white people don’t see themselves as racist. They can comfortably reel off a list of people of colour they know, like, or maybe even love. They can’t think of a time when they’ve negatively discriminated against someone on the grounds of their race. And they don’t see, in a concrete way, how their own race has positively affected them. More than that,...

Ahmed Chalabi, the smooth-talking Iraqi politician who pushed Washington to invade Iraq in 2003 with discredited information on Saddam Hussein's military capabilities, died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack. Haitham al-Jabouri, secretary of parliament's financial panel that Chalabi had chaired, said attendants had found him dead in his bed in his Baghdad home. A news flash on Iraqi state television said the cause was a heart attack. A secular Shi'ite, Chalabi rose to prominence as leader of the then-exiled Iraqi National Congress, which played a major role in encouraging the U.S. administration of former President George W. Bush to...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and his top advisers have decided, for now, against launching a war to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the next phase of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, according to senior U.S. officials and Western diplomats. With the al-Qaeda terrorist network all but vanquished in Afghanistan, speculation has been growing that Bush would turn his sights on Hussein, a longtime U.S. nemesis who is known to have chemical and biological weapons. Iraq also is believed to be working on obtaining nuclear weapons. But the officials and diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bush's ...

Save for the omnipresent Dick Cheney, the gaggle of Bush administration officials who emerged two weeks ago to lament the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq have largely disappeared from the public debate. But that doesn’t mean they’re gone. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Bush advisor Richard Perle both expressed openness in the past days to Ahmad Chalabi as a replacement for embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Chalabi is a notorious figure from the early days of the Iraq War, as he supplied the United States with a great deal of falsified intelligence upon which the Bush administration...

Libya's government earlier this month released a key terror suspect who U.S. officials say was involved in planning the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on U.S. diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi. Faraj al Chalabi, (also spelled Shibli) an al Qaeda terrorist also linked to the 1994 terrorist murder of two German tourists, was detained by the Tripoli government in March. However, al Chalabi was released June 12 based on claims that there was a lack of evidence to hold him custody. A U.S. official said the U.S. government has evidence al Chalabi was linked to the Benghazi attack but did...

Coiffed, groomed and impeccably suited, Mithal al-Alusi cuts an imposing figure at this trendy hotel. In the empty bar lounge, he makes himself at home to a breakfast of fresh fruit, strong coffee and a constant flow of cigarettes. The leader of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation is in town to promote his vision for a new Iraq and accept an accolade from an unlikely sponsor – the American Jewish Committee – who honored him with a Moral Courage award at their annual dinner last week. His act of courage was an attempt to break Iraq's long-standing taboo...

The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq Sept. 25 — Aquila al-Hashimi, a career diplomat, was the only member of Saddam Hussein's regime to be chosen by Iraq's American occupiers to sit on the interim Governing Council. Al-Hashimi died Thursday of gunshot wounds, five days after being ambushed by six men in a pickup truck near her home in western Baghdad. Widely expected to become Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, she was preparing to attend the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. Her assassination was the latest in a series of assaults against Iraqis who have worked openly with the...

The New York Sun carries a piece sure to stir up the Palin haters and embolden the Palin lovers: The call by the Arab League for Western military intervention in an Arab state -- in this case asking that a UN "no-fly zone" be imposed over Libya - is not only without precedent but it puts in formal terms what Governor Palin stated three weeks ago should have been America's response to the political and humanitarian crisis now unfolding there. The former GOP vice presidential candidate was being interviewed on February 23rd on national television by Sean Hannity on a...

The call by the Arab League for Western military intervention in an Arab state — in this case asking that a UN “no-fly zone” be imposed over Libya – is not only without precedent but it puts in formal terms what Governor Palin stated three weeks ago should have been America’s response to the political and humanitarian crisis now unfolding there. The former GOP vice presidential candidate was being interviewed on February 23rd on national television by Sean Hannity on a range of issues. On the Libya crisis, she proposed a no-fly-zone to protect the armed and un-armed opposition to...

Threats, bombs and at least 36 dead didn't stop Iraqis from voting on Sunday. But the harder part -- forming a new, more inclusive national government -- lies ahead. Formal results won't come for a few days. We'll learn how many votes, authentic and fraudulent, went to each of the big five parties and fringe elements. But the news looks good, so far. The biggest question for us in this election has been how much influence Iran might have in the aftermath. Tehran pulled out all the stops -- funneling in money and agents, sponsoring terror and engaging in no...

Two sources, one in Iraq, the other in Washington, told me that Ahmed Chalabi was key in Maliki's decision to rather ostentatiously endorse Barack Obama's Iraq withdrawal time-line. Chalabi, of course, has been in and out -- mostly out -- of favor with the Bush Administration, but it's not merely revenge that motivated his advice to Maliki. "Chalabi knows American politics better than nearly every other Iraqi politician, and he knows it's time to line up with the candidate who has the better-than-even shot of becoming President," one source told me.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — Two years ago, al-Qaeda destroyed the Chalabi village in the Sayafiyah region. A Shia tribe in a predominately Sunni area, the Chalabis fled to Mahmudiyah, Baghdad and other surrounding areas. About four months ago, Coalition forces entered the area and set up Sons of Iraq security and Iraqi Army checkpoints. Soon after, Soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), discovered residents had returned to the area. “These families had heard from word of mouth that the area was now secure so now they are...

The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi By Aram Roston Nation Books $27.50, 369 pages What do the arch hawks of the Bush administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz, have in common with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard? Answer: they both fêted Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi banker who put “regime change” in Baghdad at the top of the US policy agenda. In this biography, American investigative reporter Aram Roston says Chalabi and his organisations took millions from the US government, even as he continued to talk to Iranian intelligence services. While it uncovers...

    Shadow Warriors   By David ForsmarkFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 04, 2008 Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of SurrenderBy Kenneth TimmermanCrown Forum, $25.95, 404 pp. At long last, the CIA and the State Department have targeted a government they have identified as an aggressive threat to world peace and largely countered its foreign policy through psy-ops, propaganda, selective leaks of intelligence and covert operations.And who was the target of this covert campaign? Are these operations aimed at the Islamofascists in Iran? How about Vladimir Putin and his increasingly fascist government in Russia?...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

  Shadow Warriors   By Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, December 12, 2007 Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kenneth R. Timmerman, the New York Times bestselling author of Countdown to Crisis, The French Betrayal of America, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America, and Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq. In 2006 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his groundbreaking reporting on Iran ’s nuclear weapons program. He is the author of the new book, Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender. FP: Kenneth Timmerman, welcome to Frontpage...

A British private security firm hired to protect oil installations of post-invasion Iraq is being sued for causing the death of an American soldier. The case against the Erinys security firm, which reportedly has close ties to the former Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, is believed to be the first brought against a private security contractor operating in Iraq by a member of the US military. It comes at a time of rising unease about the actions of private security firms in Iraq after 17 Iraqi civilians were shot dead in Baghdad by Blackwater guards travelling with a convoy of US...

In his latest remarkable political reincarnation, onetime U.S. favorite Ahmed Chalabi has secured a position inside the Iraqi government that could help determine whether the Bush administration's new push to secure Baghdad succeeds. In a new post created earlier this year, Mr. Chalabi will serve as an intermediary between Baghdad residents and the Iraqi and U.S. security forces mounting an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign across the city. The position is meant to help Iraqis arrange reimbursement for damage to their cars and homes caused by the security sweeps in the hope of maintaining public support for the strategy. Mr. Chalabi's writ...

1. London, August 2006 Many miles away in a more dangerous place the dream is ending badly. The bodies pile up. Good people stream to the borders. Leaders pile money onto planes. The center is giving way. The apartment on South Street in London is an antidote to Baghdad in nearly every respect. Where the Iraqi capital rings with chaos and violence, the sidewalks of Mayfair are quiet enough to hear your own voice above the cars. Baghdad is treeless and tan; the South Street apartment opens onto a private park filled with the lushness of an English garden. Just...