Part of the problem with understanding Iraq is that many in the media have shown themselves to be so lazy and ill informed that their reports can not be trusted, and then what scant news that appears to be objective is distorted by the spinmeisters on both sides of the aisle. Thus, those of us at home have little clear idea of hwat is really going on in Iraq.
However, when I read things like this, the only question can be “What the hell is going on?”:
U.S. troops raided a house used by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi and searched his party offices in Baghdad on Thursday, piling pressure on the former Pentagon favorite now increasingly shunned by Washington.
Squads of soldiers, backed by Iraqi police, sealed off the neighborhood around the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a nearby house used by Chalabi for meeting officials, removing computers, files and other equipment.
INC spokesman Haider Moussawi said the troops also wanted to arrest two party members but were told by Chalabi they were not present. Chalabi, who returned from exile after the fall of Saddam Hussein as a potential future leader, was not detained.
This certainly does not bolster my confidencer in the administration’s handling of Iraq.
Russ
It’s almost enough to make you think the State Department and Pentagon were still packed full of Clinton appointees.
Oh….
MommaBear
There is some well-founded concern that he has had far too much contact with some people closely aligned with those mullahs in Iran, not on ideological grounds, either.
Josh Martin
I also read that the U.S. was executing search warrants for members of the IRC, and also that he may have been impeding our investigation into the Oil For Food scandle.
Speaking of, anyone want to wager that we’ll release the full and detailed results of our investigation in late summer, just in time for Bush to say “John Kerry wants America’s interests subordinated to those of an organization who helped Saddam starve his own people while lining their pockets to the tune of millions of dollars”?
That’s what I’d do, were I Bush.
Also, produce the “badly burned” body of “bin Laden” (really that of an Afghani goat-herder who died while working on his homemade still) and claim that “DNA tests confirm this is OBL.”
Then see what happens.
Tman
I seem to remember during the debates for the Iraqi Interim Constitution, Chalabi and others walked out when the female representatives demanded that Sharia law NOT be used in the constitution, for incredibly obvious reasons.
When he showed more desire to promote Islam than human rights, he probably got crossed off quite a few lists.
Estimated time until his congressional funds are cut off and he becomes politically isolated, weeks at best…..
S.W. Anderson
There’s ample reason to believe Chalabi is, at the least, what used to be quaintly called a sharp operator.
I’m just relieved our powers that be have finally seen fit to quit paying him $300,000 a month for unreliable information. Sheesh; I’d be happy to provide them some reliable information for one-third Halabi’s price.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.
The odds Bush is re-elected just improved (I do hope not too much).
Oliver
Welcome to the party. Says a lot about Cheney’s choice of friends, eh?
Lex
I’ve heard numerous hypotheses floated around, including, in no particular order:
–He’s involved in Oil-for-Food.
–He KNOWS who’s involved in Oil-for-Food, and it’s someone the administration is trying to protect.
–He has something else on the administration.
–He was playing footsie with some seriously bad Shiites in Iran.
–He defrauded the U.S. government, the Iraqi government or both in some fashion. ($337K/month for crappy intelligence sounds like fraud to me.)
–This is a ruse by the government to create some distance between himself and the U.S. to make him more palatable to anti-U.S. Iraqis.
The truth? I have no idea what the truth is.
Andrew J. Lazarus
I thought Chalabi was one of the great con men of all time, feeding us the WMD nonsense and the Iraq-Israel Peace Treaty fantasy to get millions of dollars of graft and a chance to rule Iraq as a pro-American despot.
How wrong I was. We were going to install Chalabi as a pro-IRANIAN despot.
How do you feel knowing that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and especially Wolfowitz and Feith fell for one of the great con jobs of all time, run by Iranian intelligence?
I know, I know. Bush is a great president because he stays the course. Damn, at least the captain of the Titanic tried to swerve!