Come back Ahmad, all is forgiven.
Back to Main
October 24, 2005
WB: The Return of the King
Comments
Last I heard he was Oil Minister. You don’t suppose he has Wash over an oil barrel, do you? You wanna access to Iraqi oil, huh? Then you kiss the ass of a guy in bed w/Tehran. Nahhh…but I await the thoughts of other more strategically savvy barflies. If so, then what happens to that access if xUs/Israel attacks Iran…could that be part of it??
Posted by: jj | Oct 24 2005 6:59 utc | 2
Of course Ahmad Chalabi, as quoted by 60 minutes as “the only man in Iraq who can get things done”, is and has always been the neo-con plan man — and natural viceroy of Iraq. The little problem back in the CPA days only served to cement his his confidence and support with the emerging Shiite elite as a broker (double agent) able to negotiate a soft landing both for Shia political control and US (resource&market) interests. My prediction: he’ll never make it to the election as a viable canadate — one way or the other.
Posted by: anna missed | Oct 24 2005 7:17 utc | 3
Ahmad was/is a part of the original plan for Iraq. If anybody had any doubts about how seriouse these people are about their plans for the middle east, then let this be a lesson. These people do not quit, come hell or highwater. As we inch ever closer to a showdown with Syria another chapter in that plan reveals itself! Between Syria and Iran Syria is “the low hanging fruit” and these guys love the low hanging fruit.
Max
Posted by: Max Andersen | Oct 24 2005 8:06 utc | 4
Hmmm, If I recall correctly, Ahmed Chalabi is actually currently one of the Vice presidents of the supposedly democratically elected interim government of Iraq … he was only temporarily Oil minister prior to that …
Chalabi is a classic individual of interest … he has been arguably an agent (in the intelligence operative sense) of the Israelis, an agent of the US (CIA ?), an agent of the Iranians (Intelligence service), a source for the neocons (OSP & WHIG) and a conman/fraudster for himself, i.e. Jordan (?). That makes him at least a double-agent and possibly a treble-agent *gasp* …
In fact Chalabi strikes me very much as a modern incarnation of that arch opportunist from ancient Greece, Alcibiades.(Link, brief) or (more in depth)… only without the generalship skills or apparent charisma … 🙂
Exactly the sort of fellow the Bushies would like to go to bed with …
Personally, I believe his ultimate allegiance is to himself (egotistically opportunistic advancement) and Iran and not necessarily in that order 😉
So, US policy can be said to alternate between the appointment by foul means or fair of the originally intended Viceroy, Chalabi, then Allawi, now Chalabi, and inevitably Allawi again at some point in the future … how bankrupt and bereft of insight our current cabal are …
Um, how was it and under what circumstances did Alcibiades die, executed (assassinated), whilst ‘on the run’, in disgrace … ?
Posted by: Outraged | Oct 24 2005 8:10 utc | 5
Fruit hanging low on a tree is a long reach for those lying prone under the boot of the Special Prosecutor. I’ll try to dig out my old computer w/Scowcrofts speech in which he said he’d urge impeachment if they moved on Syria or Iran. Eagleburger said the same thing, and that’s easy to pull up via google, since Frances Boyle picked up on it….
Here’s Eagleburger:
Thirteen years later, after President Bush Jr.’s invasion of Iraq, flush with “victory” and the arrogance of power, members of the Bush Jr. administration publicly threatened to attack Iran, Syria, and North Korea. In direct reaction to these threats, on 13 April 2003 former U.S. Secretary of State (under President Bush Sr., no less!) Lawrence Engleburger told the BBC:[iv]
“If George Bush [Jnr] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can’t get away with that sort of thing in this democracy.”link
Posted by: jj | Oct 24 2005 8:16 utc | 6
@ Outraged
Didn’t Alcibiades have a “Clintonesque” phallic problem regarding the disastrous Syracus expedition?
History repeating itself?
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 24 2005 8:20 utc | 7
@ jj
Judging from recent issues of the Times the
project for regime change in Syria by any means necessary (to cover Bush administration treason) is on the front burner.
For those who read Italian, La Repubblica
has begun a series of articles detailing the Italian side of the Niger stovepipe. It recounts low farce with tragic consequences, and one can only wonder whether or not the “evidence” in the Syrian connection to Hariri’s assassination was produced with similar serene detachment from objective reality.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 24 2005 8:36 utc | 8
If you have only fifteen minutes left then better to spend those fifteen minutes fighting the “good fight” then trying to save what is already lost. If somebody does end up getting indicted, a war with Syria will certainly take it off of the front page (wag the dog!). Impeached by who, the Senate, Congress or the Supreme Court? By the time mid term election rolls around Syria will be old news and we’ll be once again under orange alert with new threats. Maybe thats where the anthrax threat will re-emerge. As opposed to Iraq, Syria has proven chemical weapons capabilities. Hence the need to use tactical nukes! After that a quick trip through Damascus for a decapitation strike and we can leave the country to stew in its own soup for a while. With Israel on one side and the US in Iraq, not much is likely to happen on those borders. Irqi Baathist have no love for the Syrians and the little pow-wow with Iran hasn’t paid off. I say its a good possiblity!
Max
Posted by: Max Andersen | Oct 24 2005 8:37 utc | 9
Well, one thing you can take to the bank about this administration is that they’ll never ever, in a million years take a chance that might not be in the short term or for that matter the long term as well, anything that might compromise, or even look like a compromise, to their control over a situation. They are the preverbial one trick pony, or in Vegas the preverbial whale — always willing to bet the family farm on what they think and want — alone, which is what they are now, isolated. Isolated from, at this point, from even the most remote resolution to the the myrad smoking holes they have blown into the character of of the American democratic ideal. if not also the generic capitalistic trajectory itself.
I’m having a problem deciding whether its the final solution, or a last gasp
Posted by: anna missed | Oct 24 2005 8:55 utc | 10
This just in from Justin Raimondo that pulls together thghts. from both HKOL & Max:
Yet drawing American troops into the Levant is precisely what the neocons are counting on to distract the American people from their treason, in a “wag the dog” scenario so bold it leaves one breathless. According to Joshua Landis, the respected scholar of Syrian politics and culture who resides in Damascus, the very people who fear indictments the most are behind this new push for war:
“I have it on good authority that Steven Hadley, the director of the US National Security Council, called the President of the Italian senate to asked [sic] if he had a candidate to replace Bashar al-Assad as President of Syria. The Italians were horrified. Italy is one of Syria’s biggest trading partners so it seemed a reasonable place to ask! This is what Washington has been up to.”
The War Party is in a hurry. Even as they prepare to take indictments and fight the charges of a conspiracy to lie us into war, the neocons and their allies in the media are laying the groundwork for the next war. We’re on the Middle Eastern escalator, as I’ve said before: there is no way to contain the conflict we’ve unleashed in Iraq. Michael Ledeen, named by a former CIA operations officer as the chief conduit of the Niger uranium forgeries, continually urges this administration to go “Faster, please!” – and there are ominous indications that the foot is off the brake. The neocons know they’re running a marathon, desperately trying to outrun the consequences of their own trail of deception. Will the truth catch up with Hadley, Ledeen, et al., before they can do any more damage to American interests in the Middle East – and spill more blood? link
Posted by: jj | Oct 24 2005 9:16 utc | 11
thanks for the link jj. here’s a kicker from the article
It would have been well within the purview of Brewster Jennings & Associates to trace the origins of the Niger uranium documents back to the forgers: surely they weren’t sitting on their hands in the months before columnist Robert Novak printed Plame’s name and sparked a furor.
Everyone assumes Libby and his co-conspirators were really after Wilson, but this now seems unwarranted, especially in light of Fitzgerald’s reported focus on the Niger uranium forgeries. If this question of the forgeries is now within Fitzgerald’s purview, it opens up the possibility that the conspirators really were after Plame on her own account. If Plame and her associates were hot on the trail of whoever forged the Niger uranium documents, by neutralizing Brewster Jennings & Associates the Libby cabal closed one possible route to uncovering their schemes – and opened up another one.
Posted by: annie | Oct 24 2005 10:07 utc | 13
Remember when Chalabi was touting the Kirkurk – Haifa pipeline?
Big selling card.
Just one article from 2003, not about Chalabi specifically:
Haaretz
Anna missed wrote:
They are the preverbial one trick pony, or in Vegas the preverbial whale — always willing to bet the family farm on what they think and want — alone, which is what they are now, isolated. Isolated from, at this point, from even the most remote resolution to the the myrad smoking holes they have blown into the character of of the American democratic ideal. if not also the generic capitalistic trajectory itself.
I’m having a problem deciding whether its the final solution, or a last gasp.
Last gasp.
The attack on Iran was always a mirage; Syria, the last resistor in the ME (nationalistic, independent, to put it briefly) is isolated, in bad shape (UN report on Hariri, etc.) It is not enough. The neo-cons are proceeding with plans and business as usual, hoping that that will be enough to get them through. They have no adapted to the groundswell of negative opinion in the US, waiting to erupt, nor have they examined their strategies and reviewed them in any way. Not now, not before. That rigidity will do them in. One-trick pony, exactly.
I base that judgment on:
a) the signatures of 9/11 and all that BS about Nigerian yellowcake and alu tubes etc. are quite different. After 9/11 they thought the US public would believe anything, and that was a big mistake. They exploited 9/11 to their ends – riding on other’s actions, agenda. Poor strategy: ideally you need to “create reality” yourself, piggy-backing is cheap and tends to boomerang.
b) Their imagined card-in-the-hole is terrorism hype, possibly another terrorist attack. However, that will not work today, and Rove and Cheney must know it. They are caught in a bind: their actions were supposed to make America safer, if that proves not to be the case, they are doomed; secondly, by now (after Katrina, endless terra alerts, bogus arrest that lead nowhere, Binny still at large, though he died long ago…) many Americans will perceive the synthetic terror aspect. “Fool me once, fool me twice…”.. No.
c) their message has always been so packed with contradictions (e.g. the glory of free speech vs. no fly-lists) that even sleepy Americans are worried, puzzled, or downright scornful.
d) the rest of the world is ready to pounce! The EU press has been so silent…withdrawn…
I’m obviously filled with optimism right now!
Posted by: Noisette | Oct 24 2005 18:10 utc | 14
One of the myriad of ‘details’ the MSM isn’t too concerned about is that the people of Syria have been out on the streets protesting at the Mehlis report/cover up.
The only reference I can find to it is on the BBC website which calls it a pro-government demonstration and in typical distortion says:“Reports say many of the protesters were students who had been given a day off”.
Last night the Beeb had a telephone report from their journo on the ground (who is not long for this job one suspects) he had spoken to the demonstrators many of whom were anti Assad but were not silly enough to think that what was coming was going to be a good thing.
They basically wanted to make the point that they believed Syria was not involved in the assassination and that there was absolutely no evidence to suggest they were.
When asked if they had been told to demonstrate one said “No one has to tell us to protect our nation. Yes we got a day off but we could have stayed home if we wanted to.”
Syria may appear to the stumblebums to be an easier nut to crack than Iran. However it will not be easy per se. Like Iran, Syria is in a much better state of preparedness than Iraq and has many more friends in the world.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 24 2005 19:20 utc | 15
The Dangerously Incomplete Hariri Report
By Robert Parry, October 23, 2005
(…)
The 54-page U.N. report concludes that the bomb that killed Hariri and 22 other people in Beirut was likely in a white Mitsubishi Canter Van that closed in on the convoy of cars carrying Hariri and his entourage before a suicide bomber detonated the powerful blast.
While the identity of the bomber remains a mystery, a Japanese forensic team matched 44 of 69 pieces of the van’s wreckage to Canter parts manufactured by Mitsubishi Fuso Corp. and even identified the specific vehicle. The chain of possession for that van thus would seem to be a crucial lead in identifying the killers.
More:
Link
Posted by: Noisette | Oct 24 2005 19:38 utc | 16
I think I heard that Syria has a mutual defense pact w/Iran, so maybe they’re trying to lure them in to give them a pretext…
Posted by: jj | Oct 24 2005 19:41 utc | 17
Two things occured to me:
1- Chalabi is not really a spy for Iran, his job is to supply disinformation to Iran.
2- The purpose of the disinformation is to keep Iran from buddying up with Syria. Iran likes what we are doing in Iraq and will most probably sacrifice Syrians for it.
We are squeezing Iran from different angles to make sure that they stay out of our little operation in Syria.
Max
Posted by: Max Andersen | Oct 24 2005 20:15 utc | 18
Could be a quid pro quo going on here – xUS let’s Chalabi take over in Iraq, in exchange for which Iran looks the other way in Syria.
Posted by: jj | Oct 24 2005 20:30 utc | 19
The Big News Today from Iraq – 3 co-ordinated car-bombers struck the Palestine Hotel, where Journos stay. South Side of hotel heavily damaged. One of the bombers crashed through the barriers using a Cement truck!! Msg – Soldier AND journos out of our country! Democracy comes to Iraq…those ingrates!!!
An AP photographer at a checkpoint at the northwest corner of the hotel said at least three photographers from other media outside the hotel were injured and taken away by ambulance. Two AP employees and three other journalists inside the hotel suffered minor injuries.
Posted by: jj | Oct 24 2005 21:04 utc | 20