Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Why Have Dems & Repubs Sold Out To Chalabi & How Do We Take Back the Government?

host · 11-19-2005, 11:45 AM

It starts innocently enough with this conservative columnist's explanation:

Quote:

Ahmed Chalabi and the Arabist Alternative
By Barbara Lerner
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 16, 2005

How can America win in Iraq? How soon can substantial numbers of our troops come home, satisfied that they are leaving behind a better Iraq — a difficult, often dangerous place still, but a freer, fairer, more hopeful one, no longer an enemy state, but one allied with us in the war against Islamofascist terror?

The answer to both questions depends, in great part, on whom the Iraqis choose as their new national leader, starting with the crucial Iraqi election, now less than a month away. If Iraqis end up with an effective prime minister who will fight hard against both terror and corruption, and work just as hard to give all Iraqis a stake in the unity of their state, and a loyal, decently equipped Iraqi security force to defend it, we could see substantial reductions in US troop requirements in 2006. If, on the other hand, Iraqis choose a weak, corrupt, and/or hopelessly sectarian and divisive prime minister, the odds on a satisfactory outcome any time soon are low. Thus, all Americans have a big stake in this Iraqi election, and if our press was doing its job, American voters would know enough about the main candidates, their past records, and their plans for Iraq's future to make a reasoned judgment about which one is most likely to advance the goals outlined above.

What Americans have gotten instead is a savage, sustained smear campaign against one candidate, Ahmed Chalabi, and a see-no-evil whitewash of another, Iyad Allawi. Dr. Chalabi is the candidate long favored by American officials in the office of the Vice-president and the Secretary of Defense, officials who believe we were right to topple Saddam Hussein and try to put someone truly different in his place. Dr. Allawi is the candidate favored by the Arab League and by American Arabists — former high officials and current members of the permanent bureaucracy at CIA and State — who were against the Iraq war from the start, convinced that the best we can realistically hope for in Iraq is another Sunni despot like the twenty we already have. The argument between these two groups is legitimate; the means the Arabists use to advance their argument — a CIA disinformation campaign against Chalabi and his American supporters — is not.

As Zell Miller pointed out in connection with the Wilson-Plame disinformation campaign that forced Lewis Libby, the Vice-president's national security advisor, from office, it is both illegal and unacceptable for CIA agents to mount disinformation campaigns at home. If our press were doing its job, these campaigns would be relentlessly exposed, not just in occasional editorials, but in regular news stories, and the actual records and plans of men like Chalabi and Allawi would be clearly and prominently displayed to the American people. Instead, with only a few honorable exceptions, both the mainstream media and far Left publications like the Nation have acted as one in echoing false charges against Dr. Chalabi, and ignoring disturbing charges about Dr. Allawi.................

Okay, so far.....if you are a conservative....you just have to ignore the reports that Ahmed Chlalabi was paid $320,000 per month to con our country into invading Iraq. He's a good guy...Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice were correct in meeting with him this past week, and the reports last year that he spied for Iran were just part of a smear campaign. But, wait, what's all this ?

Quote:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7961
<div id="columntext"> November 9, 2005
As blowback from the lies that duped us into war
plunges Washington into a maelstrom of <A href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/04/AR2005110401892.html">investigations</A>
and
<A href="http://reuters.myway.com/article/20051108/2005-11-08T233554Z_01_SIB866698_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-PRISONS-CONGRESS-DC.html">counter-investigations</A>,
Ahmed Chalabi adds insult to injury by making a return trip to the Imperial
City. He's staying at the ritzy-glitzy
<A href="http://www.ritzcarlton.com/hotels/georgetown/">Ritz-Carlton</A>, where he's
staked out a whole bloc of rooms at (U.S.) taxpayers' expense, and is slated
to meet with
<A href="http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/07/cheney-to-meet-chalabi/">Dick Cheney</A>,
Condi Rice, Treasury Secretary John Snow, and the
<A href="http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/000751.html">Chalabi fan club</A> over
at the American Enterprise Institute. 

Gee, that's funny: I could've sworn Chalabi was
<A href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/20/iraq/main618637.shtml">under
investigation</A> for turning over highly sensitive U.S. intelligence to the
Iranians, and had his Iraqi home and headquarters
<A href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/20/chalabi.raid/">raided</A> by
American and Iraqi troops last year. Not to mention the fabrications he retailed
to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who reported them
<A href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08182003.html">as fact</A> and
plastered them <A href="http://www.slate.com/id/2086110/">all over</A> the <A href="http://www.realdemocracy.com/abomb.htm">front</A>
<A href="http://www.realdemocracy.com/iraqidef.htm">page</A> of the "newspaper of
record." 

A lot of people are mad about this:
<A href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-conyers/mr-chalabi-comes-to-wash_b_10319.html">John
Conyers</A>, for one, and the congressman has a whole list of people who have
questions similar to his own.
<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Durbin">Senator Richard Durbin</A> has
some, too, as Arianna Huffington helpfully
<A href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/dick-durbin-tees-off_b_10317.html">informs
us</A>: Durbin is outraged that Chalabi is back in town, and he wants to know
what Ms. Rice and other administration officials are doing meeting with a man
who may very well have endangered American troops in Iraq. Says Durbin:
"So don't be surprised if you watch the Chalabi motorcade speed up when
they pass the Department of Justice. I guess they're concerned whether an FBI
agent will come out and pursue this so-called active investigation."
If I were Chalabi, I wouldn't worry too much.
<A href="http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/chalabi-probe.html">According</A> to
the Wall Street Journal, the "investigation" into his
<A href="http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000925.html">two-timing shenanigans</A>
with Tehran is stalled to the point of being cryogenically frozen, with little
hope of revival – and that's because there are just too many people in both
parties who have befriended this scamster over the years.

If Durbin is trying to stick Chalabi on the Republicans, then perhaps he
doesn't remember his own vote
<A href="http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/10/981009-in.htm">in favor</A> of the
<A href="http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Legislation/ILA.htm">Iraq
Liberation Act</A>,
<A href="http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec98/cr100598.htm">passed</A> with
the <A href="http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/libera.htm">total
support</A> of the Clinton administration in 1998. Although Chalabi was somewhat
halfheartedly backed by Bush I, this act of Congress officially put Chalabi and
the INC on the U.S. dole and funneled
<A href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/27/1434258">more than
$100 million</A> into his coffers until he was
<A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/politics/18CHAL.html?ex=1400299200&en=9aebed392c002f06&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND">cut
off</A> in 2004. It was during the first years of the Clinton administration,
when the CIA was under the thumb of
<A href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war/">über-neocon</A>

James R. Woolsey, that Chalabi's group really came into its own as a
Washington-based lobbyist. 
The Iraqi National Congress (INC)
<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_National_Congress">originated</A> as a
project of <A href="http://www.rendon.com/">the Rendon Group</A> – a public
relations firm founded by
<A href="http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=1487&name=John-Rendon">former</A>
Democratic National Committee executive John Rendon – which signed a contract
with the CIA to build up the Iraqi opposition. This was under George Herbert
Walker Bush, who never had any intention of toppling Saddam, but once Clinton
got into office the money – and congressional support, including from liberals
like Durbin – began to roll in, and the INC set up a formidable lobbying
organization. As Jane Mayer relates in an excellent New Yorker
<A href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?040607fa_fact1">piece</A>:

"In 1994 and 1995, Robert Baer, the former CIA officer, met Chalabi
several times in Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, an autonomous area protected from
Saddam by the United States. Chalabi had established an outpost in Kurdistan.
'He was like the American Ambassador to Iraq,' Baer recalled. 'He could get to
the White House and the CIA. He would move around Iraq with five or six Land
Cruisers.'"
We didn't hear from Dick Durbin back then. It was okay with him that the U.S.
was openly proclaiming its alleged right to engage in a policy of "regime change"
in Iraq – and throughout the world, including the Balkans. (Although, to his
credit, he did try to
<A href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/kosovo_c.htm">limit</A> the Kosovo
war by trying to ban the introduction of ground troops.) As Baer puts it:
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars were flowing each month 'to this shadowy
operator – in cars, salaries – and it was just a Potemkin village. He was
reporting no intel; it was total trash. The INC's intelligence was so bad, we
weren't even sending it in." 
Chalabi's agenda was to convince the United States that Iraq under Saddam was
"a leaking warehouse of gas, and all we had to do was light a match." And the
Democrats were eager to start the conflagration, including longtime Chalabi
booster
<A href="http://www.salve.edu/pellcenter/functions/biography_detail.cfm?bio_ID=43">Peter
W. Galbraith</A>, former ambassador to Croatia and one of the main architects of
the "humanitarian" intervention in Kosovo that put in power the "Kosovo
Liberation Army" – <A href="http://www.antiwar.com/kla.html">a gang</A> of
scamsters, gangsters, and thugs in every way similar to the INC. Says
Galbraith:
"Chalabi is one of the smartest people I know. He figured out in the
eighties that the road to Baghdad ran through Washington. He cultivated whom he
needed to know. If he didn't get what he wanted from State, he went to Capitol
Hill. It's a sign of being effective. It's not his fault that his strategy
succeeded. It's not his fault that the Bush administration believed everything
he said. Should they have? Of course not. They should have looked critically.
He's not a liar; he believed the information he was purveying, and part of it
was valuable. But his goal was to get the U.S. to invade Iraq."

It wasn't just the Bush administration that helped build Chalabi's
empire-in-exile, funded it, succored it, and helped install it in Baghdad. The
Democrats continued the policy of supporting the "democratic" Iraqi opposition,
signing the Iraq Liberation Act into law on Halloween 1998 – a portent of things
to come. Upon passage of the bill, Chalabi issued a
<A href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1514463/posts">statement</A>,
which said in part:
"Today, October 31, 1998 is a great day for the Iraqi people. Today
President Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. The American
people have given their support for the end of dictatorship and for democracy in
Iraq. The INC welcomes this courageous and historic action by President Clinton
and thanks him for it. I will begin immediate consultations with leaders in the
INC and others to work for a united response on how best to take advantage of
the provisions of the Iraq Liberation Act. We will present a united front to
maximize the chances of success. We look to President Clinton to support and
work with a united INC to achieve our common goals."
In short: thanks for the dough, Bill – and I know there's more where that
came from.
The Great Pants-Dropper, for his part, was unequivocal in his support for a
change of regime in Iraq, and asked Americans to "just consider the facts":
"We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century.
They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them."
Yes, but who was going to defend America from the predator Chalabi? 
Clinton's former CIA director,
<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._James_Woolsey">R. James Woolsey</A>, took
up the cause of Chalabi some years later, serving as a pro bono lawyer for INC
members – including
<A href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002992.php">Aras Habib
Karim</A>, Chalabi's intelligence chief and known to be on the Iranian payroll
for years. These INC members were
<A href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec98/iraq_9-4.html">in
trouble</A> with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was trying to
deport them as likely Iranian agents.
<A href="http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/wools.htm">According to
Woolsey</A>, however, 

"Aras was known to have seriously irritated a senior CIA official who
resented Aras' and Chalabi's disinclination to follow orders. It was indeed
possible, Woolsey speculated, that Ali had simply been the victim of a private
CIA 'jihad' against his cousin and ended up spending three years in
jail."
Yeah, sure: poor victimized Chalabi, who
<A href="http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=784522">stopped
off in Tehran</A> before arriving in Washington. He doesn't even bother to hide
his real allegiances anymore. As Steve Clemons
<A href="http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000010.html">reports</A>:
"Woolsey's client Ahmed Chalabi secured Woolsey's services in 1998
clearing from an INS detention center in Guam six Iraqi National Congress
associates of Chalabi that the INS (and CIA) believed to be threats to American
interests. As it turned out, the INS and CIA were right as one of the detainees,
Aras Habib Karim, became Chalabi's Chief of Intelligence and was a sieve of
sensitive and classified American information to Iran, now under investigation
by the FBI. "
The neocon-INC propaganda machine enlisted politicians in both parties in an
effort to free these "political prisoners," who were supposedly victims of CIA
"persecution," including Congressman David Bonior (D-Mich.), Senators Spencer
Abraham (R-Mich.), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Jesse Helms
(R-N.C.), and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Dennis
Kucinich (D-Ohio) gave a leftish tinge to the campaign to "free the Guam Six"
(as they were known). 
The Chalabi-Aras-Iranian connection was <A
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002993.php">confirmed by the
Jordanians</A> last year, which, in tandem with the discovery that Chalabi had
passed highly compartmentalized secret information to the Iranians, was a
pivotal factor in turning Washington – temporarily – against its former
<A href="http://chalabigate.blogspot.com/2003/05/leo-strauss-philosophy-of-deception.html">protégé</A>.


Pardon my political incorrectness, but I just can't take Senator Durbin's
outrage all that seriously. Both parties collaborated in the rise of the
scamster Chalabi and in the fateful invasion that catapulted him to
<A href="http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1759">the top</A> of
the new Iraqi government. If the Democrats are really going to launch the
much-vaunted "
<A href="http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2005/11/the_senate_and_.html">phase
two</A>" of the SSCI investigation into how officials "misused" intelligence and
<A href="http://www.antiwar.com/justin?articleid=7931">perhaps</A> even
fabricated the rationale for war with Iraq, they are in large part promising to
investigate themselves and their own collusion with the Republicans, not only
more recently but as far back as the Clinton years. 
That's one promise I don't expect they'll keep.
The Democrats are getting way up there on their high horse, righteously
demanding explanations for the
<A href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,79450,00.html">transparent lies</A>
that were somehow so convincing at the time that most of them were "
<A href="http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051106/NEWS/511060309">duped</A>"
into voting for war. I don't buy it for a minute. The Iraq Liberation Act passed
the Senate
<A href="http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/10/981009-in.htm">unanimously</A>. And
here's how Salon.com, the virtual playhouse of the Clintonian democracy,
<A href="http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:RaQIk8i1ECkJ:www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/04/chalabi/index3.html+chalabi+inc+clinton+&hl=en">describes</A>

the process that led to its passage:
"For Ahmed Chalabi, the neoconservatives' support was the key to getting
Washington on his side. And Chalabi's leadership, in turn, was key to the
neocons' support for the INC. Perle and Feith, along with future Bush
administration officials Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, signed the February
1998 'open letter' to President Clinton, in which they listed nine policy steps
that were in the 'vital national interest' of the United States. The first of
these was 'Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles
and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) that is representative of all
the peoples of Iraq.' In October 1998, under intense lobbying pressure from the
neocons, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the 'Iraqi Liberation
Act,' which provided money and U.S. legitimacy for Chalabi's INC, along with six
other exile groups. "
Oh, I see: Clinton and his party "were under intense lobbying pressure from
the neocons," were they? It's
<A href="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j061303.html">as if</A> the neoconservatives
were akin to NARAL, the labor unions, or some other <A
href="http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1017.html">traditionally
Democratic</A> constituency. And we wonder how and why we went to war. 
Both wings of the War Party – the Republicans and the Democrats – lied us
into war, and if the latter are now claiming they were "
<A href="http://www.prwatch.org/node/2596">duped</A>," well, it didn't take much,
did it? Let Congress investigate not only the machinations of the neocons but
also congressional complicity in giving this administration – and previous ones
– <A href="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/warpow.html">a blank check</A>

when it comes to foreign policy. 
I am willing to concede that it's possible some Democrats have learned their
lesson and won't easily support another crusade abroad – even if it's launched
by a Democratic White House. But I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Put not your
trust in politicians, lest you be sorely – grievously – disappointed. 
By all means let the Senate Intelligence Committee launch "phase two" of its
long-promised probe of U.S.
<A href="http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php">intelligence-gathering</A>
during the run-up to war with Iraq. But pinning all our hopes on a congressional
investigation is unwise for several reasons, not the least of which is that
politicians can hardly be trusted with investigating… themselves. We are asking
politicians to do the work of journalists – and that just isn't going to fly.

And who is former Democratic party operator, John Rendon? Here is an excerpt from a new Rolling Stone Magazine report....

Quote:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...region=single7
The Man Who Sold the War
Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war
By JAMES BAMFORD

..........Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

"They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor of the industry trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."

Although Rendon denies any direct involvement with al-Haideri, the defector was the latest salvo in a secret media war set in motion by Rendon. In an operation directed by Ahmad Chalabi -- the man Rendon helped install as leader of the INC -- the defector had been brought to Thailand, where he huddled in a hotel room for days with the group's spokesman, Zaab Sethna. The INC routinely coached defectors on their stories, prepping them for polygraph exams, and Sethna was certainly up to the task -- he got his training in the art of propaganda on the payroll of the Rendon Group. According to Francis Brooke, the INC's man in Washington and himself a former Rendon employee, the goal of the al-Haideri operation was simple: pressure the United States to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

As the CIA official flew back to Washington with failed lie-detector charts in his briefcase, Chalabi and Sethna didn't hesitate. They picked up the phone, called two journalists who had a long history of helping the INC promote its cause and offered them an exclusive on Saddam's terrifying cache of WMDs.............

I've never heard of John Rendon. If Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com is reporting accurate information, what does the "man in the street", the other than average, informed, aware, and outrage American do in the face of this?
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice just met with this criminal, Chalabi, last week.
The hands of elected former and current democrats are not clean, but they are making noises in protest of Chalabi's secret meetings with Bush administration officials. If these reports are true, we cannot trust elected officials of either party, or of the party organizations.

Do you think that this is accurate information? What do you propose that we do to take back our own government, stop Chalabi, and hold all politicians and politcal operators who have committed crimes against the U.S. and Iraq, accountable?