Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

This blog will pay for itself.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Let’s finish the job.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Second rate reporter says what?

After roe, women are no longer free.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

You are here: Home / We’ve always been at war with Ahmad Chalabi

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85Comments

  5. 5.

    Zifnab

    During the years when Iraq was at the center of U.S. foreign policy, pundits and policymakers would regularly and prematurely proclaim that the following six months would be crucial to the war’s outcome. Now, at last, that forecast is warranted: The next six months in Iraq could decide whether the country emerges as a democracy friendly to the United States…

    I noticed that several of my colleagues have made terribly ill-informed and short-sighted observations about the fate of our western most Middle-East misadventure.

    This makes me feel left out. Ergo…

    /facedesk
    /facedesk
    /facedesk

  6. 6.

    Mike G

    Someone dig up a picture of that smug bastard Chalabi sitting in the prime seats at Chimp’s post-invasion State of the Union address being praised and applauded by the Repig drones. And another of the smug Repig congressmen waving their purple fingers crowing about Iraq’s elections.
    Repig governance at its finest.

  7. 7.

    Martin

    Chalabi was never trustworthy. I know his wife via a close acquaintance (I’ve been invited to her house in Lebanon) and even she says he’s not trustworthy.

    But he was confident the war was on in late summer 2002, at least that’s when Leila told us it was almost certainly a go.

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Comrade Mary: You got there before me with the Santa Claus joke, and were much funnier than I would have been.

  9. 9.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    From quoted text at the SN link above:

    According to Hill, if the contracts Iraq recently signed with international oil companies go well,..

    Well there’s your sticking point right there. God forbid that Iraq should have any system of govt. whatsoever, or any electoral outcome within a semi-democratic system of govt. specifically, that will result in anything other than a proconsul of Exxon-Mobile running the country.

  10. 10.

    Comrade Mary

    @SiubhanDuinne: Not likely. We’ve got a mind-meld thing going on. I think in the last day or so we posted the same suggestion and KTHXBYE signoff with the same timestamp. Spooooooky.

  11. 11.

    Annie

    With US money and military and through using Chalabi and others, Iran managed to strengthen its power and position in the region. We changed the balance of power, and Iran won.

    Why doesn’t anyone ask Lynne and Dick about this great success? Ask them exactly how did the Cheney/Bush years made the US safer, and Iran weaker? Ask Dick to comment on his good friend Chalabi, because it was Cheney who put him on the team, and who had visions of Chalabi marching in with the US military at the beginning and taking over the Iraqi government. (Substituting the dictator we hate for the dictator we love…)

  12. 12.

    MattF

    Back in the day, the White House Plan A was to rely on the Pentagon, and the Pentagon Plan A was to rely on Chalabi. There was no Plan B.

  13. 13.

    Tsulagi

    From the link…

    The kicker will be if Chalabi does get elected prime minister and Diehl then says we have to remain in the country to prevent him from getting weapons of mass destruction. Only then will the circle be complete!

    Pretty much.

    You could try nuking Chalabi from orbit, but don’t think it would work. You can’t kill this cockroach. He always survives.

  14. 14.

    Malron

    We’ve spent $700 billion bailing out the damn banks.

    It continues to fascinate me how no one ever challenges this fallacy. We loaned the banks $700 billion and nearly all of its been repaid except what was lost on GM and Chrysler.

    I agree we should pour more money into Iraq, though.

  15. 15.

    demo woman

    @Martin: Chalabi was a neo-cons dream come true. It gave them a reason to invade. I hope that Obama has him kidnapped and dropped on the Jordanian border.

  16. 16.

    Mike Kay

    Several years into the war, I asked John McCain what he thought of Chalabi and he said, “He’s an Iraqi patriot.”

    you can always count of McSame to get it wrong.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    Chalabi aims to become prime minister of the next government, which would be a disaster for Iraq and for Washington.

    I remember the days when Chalabi was the Iraqi George Washington who was going to save his benighted people from Saddam Hussein and we invaded a sovereign country to help him do it. Now he’s, uh, Saddam Hussein, apparently.

  19. 19.

    Napoleon

    I could never figure out how it wasn’t self evident Chalabi was a fraud/wrong person to back. Now I would never defend Middle Eastern legal systems as the best in the world, but the guy was convicted of bank fraud in Lebanon or Jordan and I never saw a decent explanation why it should not be taken at face value, and the guy had been in the west a million years prior to the war. Why would anyone think he knew what was really going on there and whywould anyone left behind would look to a semi-carpetbagger/weasel who left when the going got tough for leadership is beyond me.

  20. 20.

    Annie

    @demo woman:

    LOL….So sad but so true…

    The thing with Cheney is that he never really saw Chalabi as a true patriot. He saw Chalabi much the same way he sees himself — someone who will govern and will not tolerate anyone questioning how he governs…

  24. 24.

    Napoleon

    @demo woman:

    I hope that Obama has him kidnapped and dropped on the Jordanian border.

    Funny you should say that because I have thought if I was President and if my government was otherwise assassinating “enemy combatants” one of my first orders would be to make sure he turns up dead in circumstances where everyone understands we did it but could not actually pin it on us as a warning to others not to pull what he did to the US.

  25. 25.

    Martin

    @demo woman: But I don’t understand why the rest of the nation didn’t jump all over the situation. The guy is a fugitive in his home country and we’re going to accept a case presented from him? I’m sorry, everyone fucking dropped the ball on this one – especially the media that’ll give us a week long expose on balloon boy’s dad and whatever Jon and Kate bullshit is going on, but not bother to sound the klaxon when someone like Chalabi shows up to steer US politics.

  27. 27.

    CalD

    The sad thing is that it didn’t really take a genius to figure out that Chalabi mainly wanted us to off Saddam Hussein so that he could take his place. If there had been anyone holding the reigns of our foreign policy back in 2002, possessed of the kind of healthy skepticism normally associated with even moderate intelligence…

  33. 33.

    Rick Taylor

    Last I remember, at least some of the neocons were complaining if only we’d put Chalabi in command of Iraq like they wanted, everything would have been fine.

  34. 34.

    Brachiator

    @MattF:

    Back in the day, the White House Plan A was to rely on the Pentagon, and the Pentagon Plan A was to rely on Chalabi. There was no Plan B.

    Hell, this wasn’t much of a Plan A.

    The kicker will be if Chalabi does get elected prime minister and Diehl then says we have to remain in the country to prevent him from getting weapons of mass destruction. Only then will the circle be complete!

    I don’t think that there is a serious chance that Chalabi will get elected to any office. But I can see people floating the possibility to justify staying in the region longer than is necessary.

  35. 35.

    demo woman

    @Martin: The Washington Post buried talking points that did not support the neo-cons view on page 23. To do otherwise would cause some to question whether or not they were patriotic.
    All the information was there but not in plain site. The TV networks certainly did not question the policy of the President and the neo-cons.
    Damn Jordan had a warrant out for his arrest.

  36. 36.

    demo woman

    @Mnemosyne: Do you really think that W cared whether or not Chalabi was a grifter?
    Bush wanted justification for invading Iraq and he did not care whether or not that justification was correct.

  37. 37.

    Monkeyfister

    I’m so old, I remember when Chalabi was a bank fraudster, wanted for crimes in Iraq and Jordan. Now? Somehow, he’s the Master of teh Universe.

    yeeesh.

    –mf

  38. 38.

    geg6

    Two OT points: First, bipartisanship lives! Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe will vote yes on the jobs bill. Second, if I had a dick, I’d tell Jake Tapper to suck it. Just on general principle.

  39. 39.

    MagicPanda

    I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a person like Ahmed Chalabi. He’s like part super-villan and part incompetent buffoon. Would make for a good TV show if it weren’t so pathetic and sad.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @demo woman:

    Do you really think that W cared whether or not Chalabi was a grifter?
    Bush wanted justification for invading Iraq and he did not care whether or not that justification was correct.

    I think W gazed into Chalabi’s eyes and saw a kindred spirit, just like he did with Putin. Take that as you will.

  41. 41.

    Napoleon

    @geg6:

    I understand they have “replicas” you can buy at certain specialty shops. I am sure a bunch of us would pitch in to get you one if you used it to tell Jake that.

  44. 44.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @MagicPanda:

    I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a person like Ahmed Chalabi.

    Indeed. It is almost as if he is a grifter and con-artist of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, but he can’t get anyone to notice. He unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

  47. 47.

    geg6

    Napoleon @41: Oh, I might even have one of those “replica” thingys. But I wouldn’t pollute it with Tapper spit. I may want to use it one of these days and soft plastics don’t do well at the temperatures needed to sterilize it to keep humans safe from deadly substances like Tapper spit. ;-)

  48. 48.

    Annie

    @Mnemosyne:

    Cheney/Bush thought they could replace Sadam with Chalabi and claim victory. They never cared about “building democracy.” They only cared that Chalabi would lean towards the US. Little did Cheney/Bush know that the entire time they were waltzing him around Washington, he was on the phone to Tehran…

  51. 51.

    Brachiator

    @Annie:

    Cheney/Bush thought they could replace Sadam with Chalabi and claim victory. They never cared about “building democracy.” They only cared that Chalabi would lean towards the US. Little did Cheney/Bush know that the entire time they were waltzing him around Washington, he was on the phone to Tehran…

    This was always one of the biggest blind spots of the Bush/Cheney regime. They always had this fantasy that since the US was Top Dog World Power, any foreign government could be bent to our will. And so it never dawned on them that people like Chalabi or Pakistan’s Musharraf could have their own agendas independent of US national interest.

  54. 54.

    sparky

    @Perry Como: zackly. how about 23.7 trillion as of 2009 (can’t find anything more recent at the moment but that’s Barofsky’s number, so no doubt it’s higher than that).

    it never ceases to amaze me how people can claim TARP is either a success or anything more than a sliver of the money shoveled to the FIRE sector after they burned their own house down with the taxpayers inside.

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @Annie:

    Cheney/Bush thought they could replace Sadam with Chalabi and claim victory. They never cared about “building democracy.” They only cared that Chalabi would lean towards the US. Little did Cheney/Bush know that the entire time they were waltzing him around Washington, he was on the phone to Tehran…

    Yep. He was going to be Saddam v 2.0 but this time he would stay our guy. No matter how many times it fails, they keep going to this well over and over again.

  56. 56.

    Annie

    @Brachiator:

    You are absolutely right. It never dawned on Cheney/Bush, the neocons, and others that while we had our own agenda buried behind our slogans and public pronouncements, individuals like Chalabi were playing the same game — our game — and as Chalabi has proven, he was much better at playing our game than we were…

  57. 57.

    matt

    “RT @Liliaep: Scott Brown is an example of the progressivism that is creeping into the GOP that Glenn Beck talks about. #tcot #tlot #teaparty #gop #sgp”

    kekeke

  58. 58.

    J. Michael Neal

    @geg6:

    Oh, I might even have one of those “replica” thingys. But I wouldn’t pollute it with Tapper spit. I may want to use it one of these days and soft plastics don’t do well at the temperatures needed to sterilize it to keep humans safe from deadly substances like Tapper spit. ;-)

    Don’t they have disposables? Something called “men”?

  59. 59.

    J. Michael Neal

    @sparky:

    zackly. how about 23.7 trillion as of 2009 (can’t find anything more recent at the moment but that’s Barofsky’s number, so no doubt it’s higher than that).

    It also demonstrates that Barofsky is a useless hack with an axe to grind. The $23 trillion figure is so transparently bogus that using it demonstrates that you have no clue on the subject.

  60. 60.

    r€nato

    It’s not my fault you believed the lies you were told.

    Question: Many people [in the U.S.] who supported the war no longer do.
    Chalabi: Yes.
    Question: They feel that they were suckered.
    Chalabi: Yes, probably.
    Question: They say so.
    Chalabi: Okay, I mean, I don’t-
    Question: Well, I mean, you know, half the people now feel that the war wasn’t justified on the grounds that it was argued for.
    Chalabi: Okay.
    Question: Do you feel any discomfort with that?
    Chalabi: No. We are in Baghdad now.

  65. 65.

    Nellcote

    @geg6:

    one of those “replica” thingys.

    Let’s do a RedState and all send Tapper rubber “replica thingys” with a little “suck on this” note. I’d love to see him explaining all those packages to his co-workers.

  67. 67.

    freelancer

    @matt:

    “RT @Liliaep: Scott Brown is an example of the progressivism that is creeping into the GOP that Glenn Beck talks about. #tcot #tlot #teaparty #gop #sgp”

    It’s somewhere in this clip, or this one, and I’d look, but I don’t have 30 minutes to parse it right now, but there’s a Bill Hicks quote circa November 1992, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it goes something like:

    “Can you actually believe that there are people in the world that think that George Bush wasn’t conservative enough? I think this might be the conservative party that’s been hanging out in South America since 1945.”

    These people you are quoting lie to the Right of those people.

  68. 68.

    Kyle

    Cheney thought Chalabi was just a stupid happy little darkie he could manipulate into being an oil company proconsul-puppet.

    Chalabi saw the Bush fucktards as the marks of the century.

    The neocons got conned by a master con artist. Which wasn’t difficult – you have to be seriously arrogant, blinded by ideology and self-deluded to be a neocon in the first place.

  70. 70.

    Dreggas

    @matt:

    As I said over on the GOS. This is gonna drive the tea-baggers insane…there will be tea, oh yes, there will. be. tea.

  73. 73.

    Dr. Morpheus

    @Nellcote:

    Let’s do a RedState and all send Tapper rubber “replica thingys” with a little “suck on this” note. I’d love to see him explaining all those packages to his co-workers.

    OMG, that is such a fucking good idea.

  75. 75.

    Mike in NC

    I don’t think that there is a serious chance that Chalabi will get elected to any office.

    He’s dead meat if he stays in Baghdad, but has a bright future on Wall Street or at some wingnut think tank. He’s probably building a McMansion next door to Tom Friedman. As with Cheney, for Chalabi the Iraq War was an excellent business opportunity.

  76. 76.

    New Yorker

    You know, there are those (often cranks like Pat Buchanan) who insist we fought the Iraq War for the benefit of Israel.

    But it seems to me, more and more, that we really fought it for the benefit of Iran. We just didn’t realize it.

  77. 77.

    Texas Dem

    Perhaps Chalabi and his cronies are thinking of that line from Animal House: “You fucked up! You trusted us.”

  78. 78.

    joe from Lowell

    I used to read National Review Online, just to see what the wingnuts were up to, and they were fluffing Ahmed Chalabi, The George Washington of Iraq, back before 9/11.

    The CIA didn’t trust him, yasee, because they’re all commie-symp Democrats. Thank goodness for Donald Rumsfeld!

    Bleeding eejits. All they do is taken by scam artists, over and over again.

  79. 79.

    joe from Lowell

    @Kyle,

    Chalabi saw the Bush fucktards as the marks of the century.
    The neocons got conned by a master con artist.

    The way that you can tell a really good con artists is that, when he’s denounced as a con artist, he doesn’t have to defend himself. The marks will jump up and defend him on their own. Vehemently.

    How DARE you say Sarah Palin is taking advantage of me? How DARE you? She’s helping me to be a more effective conservative activist. With my money. You libtards wouldn’t understand sacrificing for you nation. Sarah! Sarah! Sarah! Take my check!

  80. 80.

    New Yorker

    Well, I suppose there’s always the chance that the Green revolution will bring down the Khomeinist government before the drooling Village imbeciles who had Ahmed Chalabi as their point man on Iraq get their wish and we bomb the shit out of Iran.

    But in the meantime, they should erect a statue of George W. Bush in Tehran. He’s done more to advance Iranian imperial ambitions than anyone since Xerxes the Great.

  81. 81.

    Tax Analyst

    @Kyle:

    The neocons got conned by a master con artist. Which wasn’t difficult – you have to be seriously arrogant, blinded by ideology and self-deluded to be a neocon in the first place.

    Yup, and they were so easy, too.
    Chalabi just showed up in Washington in a suit and talked a little of their delusionary shit and the next thing you know Cheney and the neo-coneheads are fitting him for a crown and some puppet wires.

    They didn’t do a very good job with those puppet wires, though.

    Chalabi was very fortunate he didn’t get strung up and separated as soon as he put a foot into Iraq. I think he probably had a huge contingent of Blackwater thugs protecting him.

  82. 82.

    de stijl

    Chalabi is obviously an Iranian asset – that easy. I have a more radical idea:

    I’m not convinced that Michael Ledeen isn’t an Iranian agent.

    He is the common thread from Iran-Contra through the Yellowcake (Don’t drop that shit!) forgery, to pimping for the Iraq invasion, and now he is against an Iranian invasion or airstrikes.

    “My fear is that, by failing to promote a non-violent democratization of Iran, we make large-scale violence much more likely.”

    Explicit US aid to the Iranian Green Revolution will kill it in the cradle. The Greens are nationalistic and patriotic and have little love for the West. Imagine what would happen to a similar American group that started receiving explicit help from China. People couldn’t run away fast enough.

    Given that all of these strengthened Iran and its regional position, it would be irresponsible not to speculate that he’s an Iranian plant.

    Granted, he may be simply working within the system to ensure that downfall of the United States for his own nefarious reasons, or perhaps he is the most stupid and despicable person on the planet.

    A lesser man might be tempted to say, “Mr. Ledeen, please fuck off and die. Faster, please.”

  84. 84.

    RadioOne

    I’m guessing this has more to do with the intensive WashPO editorial boards total love for Chalabi during the Bush years, and not with the current Federal Government, that this is news.

  85. 85.

    chopper

    @Kyle:

    yeah, when the history books are written about this it isn’t going to look good. we didn’t even get grifted by the best, our leadership was so distracted by sheer idiocy that it was almost too easy.

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