How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons (Shakeup coming at DOD)

This long but vital piece details the way Chalabi has played the neocons like a flute, how he's maneuvered to give Iran the upper hand in the Iraq conflict, and how this is splitting the neocons and Likudniks in DC and Jerusalem. It is a hell of a read!

How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons

The hawks who launched the Iraq war believed the deal-making exile when he promised to build a secular democracy with close ties to Israel. Now the Israel deal is dead, he's cozying up to Iran -- and his patrons look like they're on the way out.

A Salon exclusive.

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By John Dizard

...More than a decade ago Chalabi teamed up with American neoconservatives to sell the war as the cornerstone of an energetic new policy to bring democracy to the Middle East -- and after 9/11, as the crucial antidote to global terrorism...

...Meanwhile, administration neoconservatives, once united behind Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress he founded, are now split, as new doubts about his long-stated commitment to a secular Iraqi democracy with ties to Israel, and fears that he is cozying up to his Shiite co-religionists in Iran, begin to emerge...The bitter ex-Chalabi backer believes his former friend's moves were a deliberate bait and switch designed to win support for his designs to return to Iraq and run the country. Chalabi's ties to Iran -- Israel's most dangerous enemy -- have also alarmed both his allies and his enemies in the Bush administration...

But the neocons have bigger problems than Chalabi. As the intellectual architects of an "easy" war gone bad, they stand to pay the price. The first to go may be Zell's old partner Douglas Feith. Military sources say Feith will resign his Defense Department post by mid-May. His removal was reportedly a precondition imposed by Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte when he agreed to take over from Paul Bremer as the top U.S. official in Iraq. "Feith is on the way out," Iraqi defense minister (and Chalabi nephew) Ali Allawi says confidently, and other sources confirm it. Feith's boss, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, may follow. Bush political mastermind Karl Rove is said to be determined that Wolfowitz move on before the November election, even if he comes back in a second Bush term. Sources say one of the positions being suggested is the director of Central Intelligence.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/04/chalabi/

"Oh dear, how naive we were, don't we feel silly, just an honest mistake."

Ahman Chalabi was how he could never be repaid enough for his honorable service to the United States. Wish I could get those photos from the Washington Post that depicts the Republicans drooling all over Chalabi at a press conference.

Think about it folks, and the people running this country.

"Bush political mastermind Karl Rove is said to be determined that Wolfowitz move on before the November election, even if he comes back in a second Bush term. Sources say one of the positions being suggested is the director of Central Intelligence. "

There needs to be an end of this madness!

SECURITY". NAZIS.

<snip>
Those ties were highlighted on Monday, when Newsweek reported that "U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq." According to one government source, some of the information he gave Iran "could get people killed." A Chalabi aide denied the allegation. According to Newsweek, the State Department and the CIA -- Chalabi's longtime enemies -- were behind the leak: "the State Department and the CIA are using the intelligence about his Iran ties to persuade the president to cut him loose once and for all."





Iran's President Mohammad Khatami, left, greets Ahmad Chalabi in Tehran in December 2003

,...for smooching up to like-minded greedy corporate criminals.

Well, actually, the neocons deserve to share a cell with this asswipe for the rest of their natural born lives.

capable of doing if he decides that he's getting screwed by the Bushies. He doesn't seem the type to just go walking off into the sunset.

this is Too fucking much...:grr:

<snip>
President Bush's ability to impose order on this mess is not obvious, and he doesn't have more than a couple of weeks to figure out a solution. With photographs of U.S. troops torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners inflaming the Arab world, U.S. casualties soaring, the June 30 date to turn over sovereignty looming and no exit strategy in sight, Bush's Iraq adventure has turned into a deadly mess that seems certain to make the U.S. more at risk from terrorism, not less. Bush brought this trouble on himself by buying into the neocons' interpretation of the dynamics of the Middle East, and into Ahmed Chalabi's plans for Iraq -- maybe most disastrously by buying Chalabi's assurances that a secular government dominated by Israel-friendly Shia was possible. If Bush and the neocons wanted to know about Chalabi's real deal-making nature, the signs were there for them to read. But they didn't want to know.

Chalabi appears to have recognized that the neocons, while ruthless, realistic and effective in bureaucratic politics, were remarkably ignorant about the situation in Iraq, and willing to buy a fantasy of how the country's politics worked. So he sold it to them.

...However, the idea of giving up what Israel's right-wing Likud leaders and some of the neocons themselves believed to be Israel's God-given lands on the West Bank of the Jordan River was anathema to them. The solution to Israel's strategic dilemma, in their view, was to somehow change the Arab governments.

It is astonishing but true that in the 21st century, the most dangerous conflict in the world is rendered intractable by belief in the literal truth of a 3,000 year old piece of tribal folklore; a belief zealously upheld by some of the best educated people in the world!

beggars description! Tens of thousands must die and millions be disenfrachised, because Zeus or Apollo or Thor or Yahweh gave something to someone 5 thousand years ago?! The human race is seriously insane. And there is nothing anyone can do, but stand by and watch the infantile religionists kill everyone, because Santa Clause told them too (or some such imaginary "good Pappa")

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He's wanted in Jordan for bank fraud-- $200 million in losses-- Jordan's version of Silverado

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,936196,00.html

is chalabi a bush boy or not?

more of a neocon boy.... He played them big time. Read the article, it is great and it will fill in the blanks. :)

I can't watch it ....

Hippies in Washington

Hippies in Washington, DC gather around a guitar player while demonstrating against the Vietnam War.

http://www.picturehistory.com/find/p/17045/mcms.html

I have a yak-attack everytime I hear these broken records.

:puke: :puke: :puke:

The questioner said if that's true, then why isn't the administration making finding them the very highest priority since that means they are still in the hands of terrorists.

Feith, as in all his other answers, believes baffling with bullshit is an effective way to block out reality and the truth.

The US liberated Ira* in order to "transfer power" to Iran ..
Sounds about right - FUBAR.

btw .. "secular ties" - "Isra*l" ?? whaaaaa ?

I wonder if this information is in dickie's secret energy papers...

<snip>
One of the key promises he made concerned the revival of the Iraq-Israel oil pipeline. The pipeline from the oilfields of Kirkuk and Mosul to Haifa had been built by the British in the late 1920s, and was one of the main targets of the Palestinian Arab revolt in 1936-38. The 8-inch line was finally cut after Israel's independence in 1948. The sections in Arab territory have mostly rusted away or been carted off for scrap. The Israeli section is used as an irrigation pipe. The fully surveyed right of way, though, remains. It could handle a modern, 42-inch pipe, sufficient to supply the Haifa refinery.

With Chalabi's encouragement, the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure, which is responsible for oil pipelines, dusted off and updated plans for a new pipeline from Iraq. "The pipeline would be a dream," says Joseph Paritzky, the minister of national infrastructures. "We'd have an additional source of supply, and could even export some of the crude through Haifa. If we could build it, a pipeline would give us stable transport prices. Compare that to tankers; this year their price has almost tripled. We could also avoid problems such as strikes in our ports, which I've had to deal with. But we'd need a treaty with Iraq, and a treaty with Jordan to build the pipeline."

http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.b_PR.shtml

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS


Commerce & State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield & Gas Projects, Contracts & Exploration

Saudi Arabian & UAE Oil Facilities Profiled As Well

Such documents would be PROOF that the administration and its cronies sought to profit, using American blood and treasure to do so, via an unlawful war against another sovereignty.