U.S. supporters of Chalabi pressure Bush

U.S. supporters of Chalabi pressure Bush
Delegation protests change of heart regarding Iraqi politician
Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times

Washington -- Influential outside advisers to the Bush administration who support the Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi are pressing the White House to stop what one has called a "smear campaign" against Chalabi, whose Baghdad home and offices were ransacked last week in a U.S.-supported raid.

On May 22, according to several of these Chalabi supporters, a small delegation of them marched into the West Wing office of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to complain about the administration's abrupt change of heart about Chalabi and to register their concerns about the course of the war in Iraq. The group included Richard Perle, the former chairman of a Pentagon advisory group, and R. James Woolsey, the director of central intelligence in the Clinton administration.

Members of the delegation, who had requested the meeting, told Rice that they were incensed at what they view as the vilification of Chalabi, a longtime favorite of neoconservatives.

more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/29/MNG4A6U3D61.DTL

Last sentence is interesting.

"I know of no inaccurate information that was supplied uniquely by anyone brought to us by the Iraqi National Congress," Mr. Perle said.

took its little dog and pony show to seven to nine (depending on the news source) different country's intelligence services. Then when the US went a-looking for confimation... well, "yes, we have heard that, too..." ignoring that it was from the same exact source.

What would be interesting to learn is the answer to great speculation about how the initially dismissed story per the Niger uranium story that first floated to an Italian news service, and was about to be exed and then was revived and run... per WHERE that story with the faked documents (that the IAEA said should have been quickly debunked by anyone given that the "official names" on the documents were not in office at the time the documents were supposedly written)... or better yet - WHO pushed it to the Italian news service. It has been a long guessing game among news connected left leaning bloggers. Perhaps that was a part of the INC (with Iranian connections) game?

Anyhoo... this shell/echo game played by the INC (with Iranian help, it appears) - is how Perle gets away (in his head, at least) with making such bogus statements.

He was constantly on CNN right after 911.

This article again proves the incompetency of these bumbling clowns under the direction of junior.

"The session with Rice was one sign of the turmoil that Chalabi's travails have produced within an influential corner of Washington, where Chalabi is still seen as a potential leader of Iraq.

"There is a smear campaign underway, and it is being perpetrated by the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and a gaggle of former intelligence officers who have succeeded in planting these stories, which are accepted with hardly any scrutiny," Perle, a leading neoconservative, said in an interview. Perle added that the campaign against Chalabi was "an outrageous abuse of power" by U.S. government officials in Washington and Baghdad.

....of course we haven't heard a word of outrage from our elected officials, as they are probably as stunned or laughing so hard they can't get their breath. Do any of these neocons know what the other is doing?

~snip~
Vincent Cannistraro, a former C.I.A. counter-terrorism specialist who now consults for the government, told me, “With Chalabi, we paid to fool ourselves. It’s horrible. In other times, it might be funny. But a lot of people are dead as a result of this. It’s reprehensible.”

The humiliating raid on Chalabi’s home was authorized by the White House, as was a recent decision, by the Defense Department, to eliminate an I.N.C. stipend of three hundred and forty-two thousand dollars per month. Chalabi’s allies at the Pentagon were not notified of the raid in advance, although some knew that it was under consideration. The raid took place amid allegations that Chalabi or other members of the I.N.C. had engaged in numerous misdeeds, including embezzlement, theft, and kidnapping. After Baghdad police began investigating these charges, several of Chalabi’s top lieutenants fled Iraq.

One of them, Aras Karim Habib, the I.N.C.’s intelligence chief, escaped just before the serving of an arrest warrant. He is under investigation for passing classified U.S. government information to Iran—a member of what President Bush calls “the axis of evil.” According to a Chalabi aide, the I.N.C. has heard that it will be accused of telling Iran’s intelligence service that the U.S. had cracked one of its internal codes. Chalabi has denied any wrongdoing, and claims that the spying charge is politically motivated. “They are charges put out by George Tenet and his C.I.A. to discredit us,” he told Tim Russert, on “Meet the Press, ” referring to the C.I.A.’s director. Meanwhile, according to Cannistraro, two Pentagon officials connected to Chalabi are being investigated by the F.B.I., to determine whether an American official gave Chalabi classified intelligence on Iran.

The spying charges have forced Chalabi’s patrons at the Pentagon to distance themselves from him. Paul Wolfowitz, who was one of the earliest and most outspoken proponents of an invasion of Iraq, and who has been friends with Chalabi for years, spoke of him with studied detachment at a recent congressional hearing. He praised the I.N.C.’s effectiveness in providing battlefield intelligence since the war began, but he said, “I think there’s quite a bit of street legend out there that somehow he is the favorite of the Defense Department, and we had some idea of installing him as the leader of Iraq.”


~snip~
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040607fa_fact1

thanks for the link.

~snip~
For most of the past decade, Brooke has functioned as Chalabi’s unofficial lobbyist in Washington. Brooke, his wife, Sharon, and their children live for free in the town house, which is owned by Levantine Holdings, a Chalabi family corporation based in Luxembourg. Part home, part office, with a succession of Iraqi exiles camping out in the basement, this was the place from which Chalabi spearheaded a sophisticated marketing operation that Brooke described proudly as “an amazing success.” As he put it, “This war would not have been fought if it had not been for Ahmad.”

Brooke, who is a devout Christian, has brought an evangelical ardor to the cause of defeating Saddam. “I do have a religious motivation for doing what I do,” Brooke said. “I see Iraq as our neighbor. And the Bible says, When your neighbor is in a ditch, God means for you to help him.”

~snip~

Not even in the Reagan era, when I worked in and around the Hill, did I see religious fanatics in positions of power, or if they were, they did not wear it on their sleeves, nor use it to shape their professional work/demeanor.

a little plug - if you haven't been following my GD thread per the Chalabi affair - you might find some of the links people are putting together (different news stories - different names/connections) rather interesting: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1675445&mesg_id=1675445

from the same New Yorker story

<snip>
The genesis of Brooke’s assignment was the decision not to unseat Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War. In May, 1991, President George H. W. Bush signed a covert “lethal finding” that authorized the C.I.A. to spend a hundred million dollars to “create the conditions for removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer who was assigned to Iraq at the time, said that the policy was all show, “like an ape beating its chest. No one had any expectation of marching into Baghdad and killing Saddam. It was an impossibility.” Nonetheless, the C.I.A. had received an influx of cash, and it decided to create an external opposition movement to Saddam. </snip>

<snip>“We tried to burn through forty million dollars a year,” Brooke said. “It was a very nice job.”</snip>

I bet the hell it was a nice job meanwhile the poverty rate rises, more people out of jobs that pay a living wage, no health insurance, and a stupid pResident proposing cutting all of OUR domestic programs.

:)

The al Queda and Iraq connection now has become clear to and how it was leaked to FAUX news for the freepers to believe of its authenticity.

"The I.N.C. disseminated a story that Mohamed Atta, the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, had met in Prague in April, 2001, with an Iraqi intelligence agent. In February, 2002, David Rose wrote in Vanity Fair that a defector named Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy said that he had worked at a terrorist camp in Iraq called Salman Pak, where non-Iraqi fundamentalist Arabs were trained to hijack planes and land helicopters on moving trains. He also asserted that Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague. Rose noted the I.N.C. had sponsored Qurairy, and wrote that an aide of Chalabi"

I can't believe the free rein that this bumbling administration gave to Chalabi.

she is one useless official:

"Participants in the May 22 meeting with Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, said Rice told them she appreciated that they had made their views known. But she gave no hint of her own opinion, participants said, and made no concessions to their point of view."

Seems to me that this will have to be swept under quickly now that Chalabi's cousin has been chosen for PM of Iraq. Another miserable failure of Bushco decision making.

with all the info coming out about Chalabi...who knows what will be uncovered.