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BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte met Friday with Iraq's prime minister in the second visit this week by a top U.S. official. The unannounced meeting comes amid spiraling violence that included seven American deaths and the discovery of 56 bodies in the Iraqi capital bearing signs of torture. The bodies found scattered around Baghdad were of Iraqi men between 20 and 45 years old, and all were apparent victims of sectarian death squads, police said Friday.All wore civilian clothes and had been bound at the wrists and ankles, police Lt. Mohammed Khayon said. He said the...

The sordid tale now making the rounds in the "mainstream" press of a rogue Pentagon intelligence operation has all the elements of an urban legend: heavy breathing, a secret basement office "down by the ramp" and government officials who form a hidden alliance based on long-ago ties to an obscure but influential university guru. Only the work of a few good men with the courage to face up to this "cabal" - and a few crusader-journalists to help them - can make the demons scatter and scare the dark ones into the light. Or so the story goes on those...

The Talk Shows Sunday, March 19th, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Vice President Dick Cheney. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Olympic speed skater Joey Cheek. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Joseph Biden, D-Del.; Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi; Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah; former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Iraq's deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi was put in charge of the oil ministry Friday after the minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, was relieved of his duties, an official said. "The government has relieved Mr Bahr al-Ulum of duties for 30 days and put in charge Mr Chalabi who heads the energy council," the official said on condition of anonymity. "The decision was taken because of Mr Bahr al-Ulum's objections to the early introduction of higher petrol prices," the official said. The Iraqi government earlier this month announced a tripling of petrol prices in a bid to reduce subsidies, a...

The priests have long since departed, but the elite Jesuit high school called Baghdad College still looms over the swirling world of Iraqi politics. The three Iraqi political leaders considered most likely to end up as prime minister after nationwide elections this week - Ayad Allawi, Ahmad Chalabi and Adelabdul Mahdi - were schoolmates at the all-boys English-language school in the late 1950's, fortunate members of the Baghdad elite that governed Iraq until successive waves of revolution and terror swept it away. The boys of Baghdad College, now men in their 60's back from exile, are ready to assume their...

Lance Dickie / Seattle Times editorial columnist When red and blue turn purple President Bush is having an especially tough week with the Iraq war when he gets hung out to dry by Ahmad Chalabi and the U.S. Senate on the same day. Chalabi is the convicted embezzler behind suspect intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which the White House found irresistible before the war. He is now deputy prime minister of Iraq. His illuminating PBS appearance on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer came amid a grand tour of Capitol Hill and the White House. Interviewer Ray...

But in trying to set the record straight, [Bush] asserted: "When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support." The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.

Ahmed Al Chalabi, who has taken several steps that were not well estimated in the past, is seeking to re-produce himself in front of the Americans, whom some observers believe that they would keep a distance between them and the man, whose image has shaken a lot due to the policies that he adopted in the past. In the beginning, Al Chalabi's visit to Washington has been surrounded with many questions. It came during a very sensitive period, due to the intensive Iranian intervention in Iraqi affairs and the American reaction towards it. It has been preceded with a history...

Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC? By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, at 11:46 AM ET The power to cloud congessmen's minds? Click image to expand. The power to cloud congessmen's minds? What do you have to believe in order to keep alive your conviction that the Bush administration conspired to launch a lie-based war? As with (I admit) the pro-war case, the ground of argument has a tendency to shift. I saw two examples in Washington last week. An exceptionally moth-eaten and shabby picket line outside...

THE FIGHT FOR IRAQ Democrats Ask Whether Chalabi, In U.S., Will Face FBI Questions By SCOT J. PALTROW Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 10, 2005; Page B3 Three Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats demanded that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales answer questions both about Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi's current visit to top Bush administration officials and about why a criminal investigation into his possible role in leaking U.S. secrets to Iran appears to have languished. Mr. Chalabi, now a deputy prime minister in Iraq with authority over its oil resources, arrived in Washington Tuesday on his first visit to...

WASHINGTON - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi offered Wednesday to be questioned by the Senate on his role in prewar Iraq but refused to apologize for fueling allegations that Saddam Hussein had hidden caches of weapons of mass destruction. Accorded a warm reception by the Bush administration, Chalabi lined up Vice President Dick Cheney and five Cabinet officers, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, for meetings this week and next. Chalabi, whose reputation in Washington has soared, fallen and now revived, was welcomed by administration officials whom he briefed on Iraq's reconstruction...

<p>Ahmad Chalabi, Iraq's deputy prime minister and head of the Iraqi National Congress, arrives today on a visit to Washington and New York, his first trip to the United States in nearly two years. The official American invitation reflects a recognition that Chalabi is among Iraq's most effective political figures and a repudiation of an earlier, perverse U.S. effort to "marginalize," if not destroy, him.</p>

WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - The Iraqi politician most associated with the discredited prewar intelligence that has the Bush presidency in turmoil visits Washington this week as he maneuvers for advantage before Iraq's Dec. 15 elections. Ahmad Chalabi, Iraq's deputy prime minister, is a former U.S. golden boy who for years was on the Pentagon payroll. He fell from favor after the United States ousted Saddam Hussein but has proven a remarkable political survivor and is considered a likely candidate for prime minister. Chalabi's visit will almost certainly provoke more debate over President George W. Bush's conduct of the war,...

John McCain, a Neocon's Neocon, will be dead for '08 if Plamegate detonates in the way the Left hopes. Plamegate is a twofer-- it's designed to politically castrate/impeach Bush and to thin the GOP field for Hillary in '08. McCain's closeness with Chalabi-- there is footage-- will be the focus of the Clinton War Room. McCain is no winner in '08. The GOP base will have to be passionate for whoever the candidate is-- despite McCain's fiscal thrift, he can never make the base love or trust him. His Chalabi connection kills him with independents and mods assuming Iraq continues...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi will be visiting the US capital in November at the invitation of Treasury Secretary John Snow. The visit is likely to mark a political rehabilitation in the United States of the controversial former Iraqi exile leader, whose Baghdad headquarters were raided in 2004 and who was accused of passing on secret information to Iran. The Time magazine report says Chalabi will have potentially more significant meetings with national security adviser Stephen Hadley and perhaps Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Both now believe Chalabi is a plausible and acceptable candidate to be...

WASHINGTON: Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries. The men, Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the CIA. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Maloof. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the CIA's finished reports." They recorded and annotated their evidence on butcher paper hung like a mural around their small office. By the end of 2001, they had constructed a startling new picture of...

    New Iraqi PM Not Ashamed of CIA LinksWed Jun 9, 2004 01:09 PM ET By Lin Noueihed BAGHDAD (Reuters) - New Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Wednesday he was not ashamed of having worked with the CIA and other intelligence agencies as head of an exiled group trying to destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime. "I was the head of a political organization in touch with at least 15 intelligence services across the world and in the region," Allawi said after a cabinet meeting. "We don't feel ashamed of having been in touch to liberate Iraq from the...

The man backed by many in the Bush administration to head Baghdad's postwar government said Sunday that documents uncovered over the weekend show that Saddam Hussein tried to recruit U.S. citizens to undermine the Bush adminsitration's war effort in Iraq. "We have captured a great many files of Saddam's services and there is astounding information about the extent of their networks and their efforts to recruit foreign nationals - including Americans - to work in the Mukabahrat [Iraqi intelligence service]," said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. "I think that this is something that must be pursued,"...

Tamara Chalabi, Democratize Oil Revenues, Open Democracy Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 12:11:30 -0400 Iraq’s people vote on their draft constitution on 15 October. A single sentence in the document may be the key to its success, says Tamara Chalabi. [Click above link to access the hot links within this commentary]: Hard times may still continue in Iraq. However, the hopes for social and political justice, as well as resolving the problem of federalism and containing the violent insurgency, might reside in chapter 4, article 109 of the draft constitution. It simply states that: “Oil and gas is the property...

...The dilemma is that most of Iraq's oil wealth is found in areas claimed by Shiites and Kurds. And some leading Iraqi ethnic politicians have been asserting a right to keep all the oil revenue in their regions. Kurdish chieftain Massoud Barzani wants to control the northern city of Kirkuk, while Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is pushing for nearly complete control of the oil fields in the south. Thus strong regional governments, if allowed too much control over oil, risk leaving an Iraq with a rump Sunni province, and could create the perception of a legitimate grievance where none...