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Monday, May 24, 2004
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DANCING WITH THE ONE WHO BRUNG YA
Just when you think that things couldn't get worse in Iraq, they always manage to. The United States government has apparently decided that it no longer wants to be friends with Ahmed Chalabi. Actually, that's not entirely true. The U.S government has always been of a divided opinion regarding Chalabi and his orginization, the Iraqi National Congress. The division were essentially along these lines, the State Department and CIA loathe him and the Department of Defense and Office of the Vice-President feel he is cuddly. Well, up until last week they did.
The INC was based in London and was long considered the main opposition to the rule of Saddam Hussein. Chalabi left Iraq in the late 1950's and did not return until the liberation of last year. Following the establishment of the northern "no-flight" zone after the first Gulf War, the INC moved into the Kurdish area of the country and was instrumental in smuggling Iraqi defectors out of the country. Those defectors, particularly those from Saddam's military, intelligence or scientific sectors were then turned over to the CIA. Well, they were turned over to the CIA after several weeks of INC debriefing. This is where most (but by no means all) of the more sensational WMD intelligence came from. I'm sure were all remember the chorus, massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, continuing support of anti-American terrorism and, most frihtening, that Saddam was approximately 10 seconds from producing nuclear weapons.
Most (though not all) of the allegations were later revealed to be complete and utter horseshit. The CIA made this determination back in the mid-90's and essentially refused to have anything further to do with Chalabi. The INC responded by thereafter sending its defectors to to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The State Department had other, more practical problems with Chalabi. Notably that he's either a wanted or convicted felon, depending on which country in the Middle East you ask about him.
In 1992, a Jordanian court sentenced Chalabi to 22 years in prison for fraud and embezzling 288 million dollars from Petra Bank, which he founded and ran until its collapse in 1989, and moving the funds into Swiss accounts. Chalabi's appointment to the 25-member US-installed Governing Council in Baghdad last summer was met here by a mood of sheer disapproval. But even before then, Jordanians were publicly criticising Chalabi. In April 2003 Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher dismissed him as a "divisive character" in an interview with US television.
"Ahmed Chalabi is not just wanted in Jordan. He is involved in financial irregularities in Lebanon. He has caused the collapse of two banks in Lebanon. He is involved in financial irregularities in Switzerland, where another institution, financial institution, collapsed," Moasher said.
Jordan, Lebanon and Switzerland? He gets around, doesn't he?
Even knowing what they did about Chalabi, and even though about half of the government distrusted the information he provided, the United States continued playing ball with him. In March of 2000, DoD began paying the INC about $350,000 a week. I needn't point out that neither President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld were in office then. Congressional and other Demorats continue to decry everything about Chalabi, but convienently neglect to point out that President Clinton actually put him on the payroll.
If the Clinton folks hated Chalabi and knew he was full of shit and bad with money, why would they give him so much credibility and loot? The reason is actually pretty simple. Once the United States Congress passes a spending resolution and appropriates funding for it, the Executive branch has no choice but to spend it. To properly explain this, I'll need to give some backround. Bear with me, its pretty funny.
In the early 1970's, President Nixon decided that the Democratic Congress was too loose with money. They stubbornly insisted on appropriating more than he requested. Nixon then proceded to spend only what he felt was necessary and "impounded" or carried over to the next fiscal year, what was left over. Congress responded to this by passing, over Nixon's veto, the Presidential Impoundation of Funds Act, which essentially said, "If we pass it, you spend it. No cute stuff!"
This is relevant as in 1998, Congress passed and President Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act. A provision of the act specified the following;
(2) MILITARY ASSISTANCE
(A) The President is authorized to direct the drawdown of defense articles from the stocks of the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training for such organizations.
(B) The aggregate value (as defined in section 644(m) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961) of assistance provided under this paragraph may not exceed $97,000,000.
Upon signing the Act, President Clinton said,
"On October 21, 1998, I signed into law the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, which made $8 million available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition. This assistance is intended to help the democratic opposition unify, work together more effectively, and articulate the aspirations of the Iraqi people for a pluralistic, participa--tory political system that will include all of Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups. As required by the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for FY 1998 (Public Law 105-174), the Department of State submitted a report to the Congress on plans to establish a program to support the democratic opposition. My Administration, as required by that statute, has also begun to implement a program to compile information regarding allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes by Iraq's current leaders as a step towards bringing to justice those directly responsible for such acts."
There was a small problem with the Iraq Liberation Act. There were basically three "democratic opposition groups" in Iraq, all of whom were the in the Nothern no-flight zone. These were the INC and two Kurdish opposition groups, who distrusted one another and Saddam, in 1995, manipulated into actually shooting at one another. The last thing that the administration needed was to finance a Kurdish civil war, which would greatly annoy Syria, Turkey and Iran- all of whom border Iraq and all of whom have pushy Kurdish populations of their own.
Remember, the Clinton and Bush administrations were required by federal law to spend that $97,000,000. Guess who won the jackpot?
Then the Bush people take over in January of 2001. The divisions regarding the INC are still present, but suddenly, the Chalabi supporters are in much greater proximity to the president. These supporters include Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney. CIA Director Tenent loathes Chalabi, but hey, Tenent's a Clinton appointee. Chalabi now had an entree in the White House itself.
Last week, the Bush administration apparently decided that it no longer likes Chalabi. As a matter of fact they raided his home and made all kinds of nasty accusations of providing secret information to Iran.
This upset Mr. Chalabi, who had all manner of interesting things to say about these developments.
MR. CHALABI: First of all, the charges about giving classified information to Iran by me or by any INC officer are false, non-existent. They are charges put out by George Tenet and his CIA to discredit us, and I want to go to Congress. I'm prepared to go to Congress and testify under oath and expose all the information and the documents in our possession and let George Tenet come himself to Congress to testify and let Congress resolve this issue.
Because, everyone knows Tenant hates you. That would make for fantastic TV. Maybe they'll wrestle on the floor of the hearing room, too. That would be fun.
MR. RUSSERT: It seems to be beyond George Tenet. The Wall Street Journal put it this way: "Recent intelligence, including communications intercepts, suggest Mr. Chalabi ... provided contacts in Tehran with details of U.S. security operations and political plans."
And this from Newsday: "The Defense Intelligence Agency"--that's not the CIA, that's the DIA--"has concluded that U.S.-funded arm of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources. Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein."
Uh-oh. That could mean that Iran could've been behind the U.S invasion of Iraq. That would be very bad if it turned out to be true. I could see Kerry's ad now, "George Bush hasn't alienated all foreign governments. Iran's sends him Christmas cards..."
MR. CHALABI: Anyone who has intercepts who has any information, any documents, I am prepared to go and face all this in the United States Congress. It is no good quoting unnamed sources to say that they have a case. These are allegations that are put forward and directed by the CIA.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Chalabi, have you not had extensive meetings and contacts with the Iranian government?
MR. CHALABI: Indeed, we have had many meetings with the Iranian government, but we have passed no secret information, no classified documents to them from the United States because principally, we are allies of the United States and we do nothing to harm the United States. Furthermore, we have not had any classified information given to us by the United States, nor have we had any classified briefings, nor have I seen any classified document from the United States. And I believe none in the INC have done that either.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you how some of the papers here have reported this latest incident. The New York Times: "Mr. Chalabi, regarded by many Iraqis as an American stooge, seemed to relish his new role as a martyr ... moving away from the Americans as he has moved closer to the country's Shiite majority."
The Christian Science Monitor said there is rumors all over Baghdad that said this was all part of a constructed charade by you and American officials in order for you to position yourself as independent of America so that you can seek to obtain power in Iraq.
In politics, this is known as "playing both sides against the middle." People like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair has dubbed it, "The Third Way."
MR. CHALABI: Well, you can see the quality of the information then. Iraq is not Latin America. It's not Honduras. And I would say a piece of advice for Ambassador Negroponte. If he thinks he comes here and provides diplomatic cover for the control of Iraq through covert operations, I think he would be sadly mistaken. Iraq seeks to be a democratic country, and the majority of the people of Iraq will express their views in an election. The process that is going on now in Iraq to select a government, the Brahimi, Bremer, Blackwell process will lead to a failure of the government after June 30. I call on President Bush, who is still the most popular politician in Iraq, to convene a meeting of Iraqi leaders in Camp David to iron out this process and put in place a government for Iraq that is effective, representative, and can lead Iraq to elections next January.
"The process that is going on now in Iraq to select a government, the Brahimi, Bremer, Blackwell process will lead to a failure of the government after June 30." These are commonly known as, "fighting words." Essentially, Ahmad Chabali just declared war on George Bush and his policy.
But he'd like to still visit the weekend place.
MR. RUSSERT: Won't that be perceived as a puppet government of the United States?
MR. CHALABI: Not at all. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, Massoud Barzani, Jalal Talabani, Mohammed Bahr Al-Uloum and others are not perceived by anyone as puppets of the United States.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn the U.S. taxpayers. This was a report from Reuters. "The United States paid Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress at least $33 million since March 2000, according to a congressional report made public on Thursday. ... U.S. officials this week said the Pentagon stopped funding the INC - it had been giving roughly $340,000 a month - with the final payment in May."
What did the U.S. taxpayers get for $33 million?
Well, to be fair, they got a war that looked pretty cool on TV. And they don't have Saddam to kick around anymore. Oh, and don't get me started on poor, poor Uday. The president also got to say "rape rooms" more than all of his predecessors combined. 100 bucks says he uses the phrase at least once tonight.
MR. CHALABI: I refer you to the testimony of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Congress a few days ago. General Myers said that the information provided by the INC saved American lives.
MR. RUSSERT: Then why--excuse me.
MR. CHALABI: They saved American lives.
MR. RUSSERT: Then why did the Pentagon take you off the payroll?
MR. CHALABI: We were never on the payroll of the Pentagon. We had a cooperative program with the Pentagon and we contributed to it more than they did. It was a prewartime program designed to fight Saddam Hussein. With the movement toward sovereignty on June 30, it is inappropriate for a political party in Iraq to have relations of this nature with a foreign military organization. This program should move to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. It was terminated by mutual agreement to end on June 30, 2004, with the advent of sovereignty.
MR. RUSSERT: We all remember when Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations and made the case against Saddam Hussein. He was on this program last week and expressed grave concern about the quality of some of that information. Here's an article from the Los Angeles Times. "The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named `Curveball'...
"U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name until after the war. ... U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist. ... They then asked former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi...to help search for intelligence supporting their theory. Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army. ...
"Only later...did the the CIA learn the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi's top aides, and begin to suspect that he might been coached to provide false information."
MR. CHALABI: We don't know who "Curveball" is. That is part of the charges. Let them bring their files. I'm prepared to go to Congress. I'm prepared to answer all these charges. We are mystified by this information. We are mystified by who this person is and who is he the brother of. We've been looking very actively to find out, but we still have not found out. Let them tell us who it is, and let them put those charges, and I'm prepared to go and answer them in Congress.
And it's not like Chalabi would do anything criminal like, I dunno....lie to Congress.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Chalabi, it's beyond the CIA and just George Tenet, as you suggest. This is Whitley Bruner, who was the CIA agent who first contacted you: "[Chalabi's] primary focus was to drag us into a war...He couldn't be trusted."
David Kay, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector: "[Chalabi's] history is one, as a con man, quite frankly. ... It was a conscious campaign designed to get the U.S. militarily involved in the removal of Saddam. ...Through fabricated information that indicated a weapons program that they did not have."
And this from Pat Lang, who headed up counterterrorism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for eight years at the Defense Intelligence Agency: "He's a fake, one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the American people."
How can all these people be so wrong?
MR. CHALABI: They are all wrong. They are--this is part of the common wisdom that has grown in Washington, but it is baseless. We provided--our focus was not weapons of mass destruction. Our focus was the suffering of the Iraqi people and the liberation of Iraq. It is no secret the Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 under the Clinton administration, and Clinton signed it. It was the object of United States national policy to have regime change in Iraq. And President Bush came. Through his leadership and courage, he implemented this law, and the Iraq Liberation Act was passed long before any of these allegations came out. So they should go and criticize the United States Congress. We did not drive the United States to war in Iraq. We were seeking the liberation of our country, and the United States decided for its own security and strategic purposes to help the Iraqi people liberate themselves, and that is what happened.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Chalabi, you did say in--and the public documents are very clear, that the United States would only need 30,000 troops in Iraq, that we would be greeted as liberators. Some fellow exiles said we'd be given sweets and flowers on the streets and that you could take U.S. troops to where the weapons of mass destruction actually existed. And when asked about that in February, this is what you told The London Daily Telegraph. "We are heroes in error. ...As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."
What was said before is important because it was information you provided to U.S. officials and to the American people.
MR. CHALABI: What was said before is very important. This interview is false. The reporter did not ask these questions and I did not say "heroes in error." I never gave him an interview. I was sitting in a room chatting. The issue here is this. We believe that the United States came to liberate the Iraqi people, and I think the liberation was successful. Very few American troops were needed to defeat Saddam and the Iraqi people greeted them. If the Iraqi people had fought them, just think what would have happened in Baghdad considering what happened in Fallujah. The resistance was non-existent. They were greeted as liberators. The liberation was successful. The occupation has been a failure.
Memo to Ahmad:If you really want to be friends, avoid using the word "failure" in regards to the central event of a presidency when that president is up for re-election, okay? On the other hand, if you don't want to friends, you're off to a STELLAR start.
MR. RUSSERT: You said the other day, "Let my people go free." We here in the United States have paid a very big price for the liberation of Iraq. Seven hundred and ninety-three brave men and women dead, 4,524 injured or wounded. And now you're saying, "Let my people go free, get out." Is that gratitude?
MR. CHALABI: I never said get out. The Iraqi people are absolutely grateful to the U.S. soldiers, the brave young men and women, and we are sorry for every single casualty that happened in Iraq. We are very sorry about that. We are grateful and we will continue to so, but what we mean by let my people go is that we want sovereignty as agreed with President Bush. President Bush agreed to give Iraq sovereignty. We are struggling every day to implement this promise in Iraq and we want arrangements to give Iraq control over its armed forces, over its finances. We want advisers appointed by the CPA to go when the CPA is dissolved on June 30. And we want to make it possible for the U.S. troops to go out of Iraq with the thanks of the Iraqi people after having liberated our country, and we also want to have a strategic relationship with the United States, favoring United States' interests in Iraq because we believe that this is also in the interest of Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: If the U.S. troops left Iraq, what would they leave behind?
MR. CHALABI: I hope they would be leaving a democratically elected government in Iraq that is friendly to the United States and that will be a model for future governments in the Arab and Muslim world.
And with guys like Ahmed Chalabi on the case, how couldn't that happen?
MR. RUSSERT: What if the Iraqi people chose a theocracy, a fundamentalist Islamic extremist country?
MR. CHALABI: I believe the Iraqi people have enough sense to choose a democratically elected government. This is a hypothetical question that is not pertinent here.
MR. RUSSERT: Well, look what's next door in Iran. Do you think that's a democracy?
MR. CHALABI: Iran was not liberated by the U.S. troops. The Iranians overthrew a regime, an oppressive regime that was friendly to the United States and the Iraqi people have learned from the experience of their neighbors very well. They are very careful in what they want. The Islamic parties in Iraq who are in the Governing Council also approved the transitional administrative law which gives freedom of faith to individuals in Iraq. It gives a bill of rights which is far more advanced than any in the Middle East. And that law was approved by the Islamic parties. It is possible under that law for a Muslim to change his religion without being punished. That is not the case in Egypt nor is it in Jordan. It also gives freedom for Iraqis to recover their citizenship regardless of their religion or national origin, and that's a great step forward.
MR. RUSSERT: Finally, will you seek elective office?
MR. CHALABI: No, I'm not a candidate for any government office.
MR. RUSSERT: Ahmad Chalabi, we thank you very much for your views.
That Ahmed Chalabi is a skunk was never much of a secret. But he was the United States' skunk in a place where they are rapidly running out of friends. The last thing this administration needs is more enemies in Iraq. Particularly enemies with guns. America has enough of those already.
And there are political considerations here as well. Chalabi, for whatever reason, is the jerk-off fantasy of the Neocon crowd. The Neocons are widely reputed to be the most loyal of Bush voters. But they can be fickle. Very, very fickle. If the president has any doubt about that, he should ask his father. These crazy bastards would much sooner see a President Kerry than to vote for a president whom they feel betrayed them. 41's people thought they would come around and would rather see him re-elected than have Clinton in the White House.
Which is why there was eight years between people named, "President Bush."
Anyhow, the president goes on at 8EDT to give the latest twist in Iraq policy. I'm sure that I'll have lots to say about it.
Besides...it can't get worse, can it?
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