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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Drop your bombs between the minarets

Drop your bombs between the minarets

by DougJ|  November 3, 20159:51 am| 71 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Ahmad Chalabi died earlier today. Here’s my favorite story about this con man who helped talk a weak and stupid political establishment into a disastrous war, from 2004.

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran’s intelligence service, betraying one of Washington’s most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials.

His ol’ buddy Hitch, another person I’m not sorry is feet under, had his own version of the story:

Hitchens then turned the subject back to Chalabi, his good friend. I asked him if he thought Chalabi had been passing American intelligence to the Iranians. “No,” he insisted. “It’s possible that with his training, you know, at [The University of] Chicago that with his own ability he was able to crack the codes. He is a mathematical genius. His expertise is cryptology. It is possible that he broke the codes himself.”

I’m not a professional cryptographer, but many of my friends are, and I can tell you that Chalabi would probably have a better chance of putting together his own H-bomb than of breaking these codes himself in his spare time. This commenter on Michael Totten’s blog (of all places) may have put it best:

To anyone with just a little technical knowledge, the idea that someone with could break strong cryptography, or was a genius no less because they published a couple of abstract algebra papers, is really out-loud laughable.

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Reader Interactions

71Comments

  1. 1.

    MattF

    November 3, 2015 at 10:01 am

    Hitchens was a professional party-goer. Not an arduous line of work, but what does that say about Chalabi?

  2. 2.

    Jerzy Russian

    November 3, 2015 at 10:03 am

    I used to use rot-13, but I decided I needed something at least twice as strong. So now I use rot-26 to encode all of my transmissions.

  3. 3.

    Thoughtful Today

    November 3, 2015 at 10:06 am

    …

    If you didn’t fall for the Iraq War Lie you aren’t a Serious Person.

    … I’m told.

  4. 4.

    pseudonymous in nc

    November 3, 2015 at 10:07 am

    Say what you like about Chalabi, but he moved back to Baghdad and stayed there, which is more than his sponsors did.

    Lots of people (especially on the ‘decent’ warmongering centre-left) wanted somebody who’d tell them the right sort of lies in order to pretend that invading Iraq was a war of national liberation that would empower moderates. Chalabi was that somebody.

  5. 5.

    NobodySpecial

    November 3, 2015 at 10:08 am

    con man who helped talk a weak and stupid political establishment into a disastrous war

    He didn’t have to talk anyone in that party of bloodthirsty savages into anything. He just was unsuccessful in talking his way into the top spot when they got done throwing away lives. Failed con man, RIP.

  6. 6.

    rikyrah

    November 3, 2015 at 10:09 am

    Melania Trump, the Silent Partner
    By GUY TREBAY
    SEPT. 30, 2015

    Lying prone on a rug adorned with the Great Seal of the United States, the woman who might someday be first lady is wearing high-heeled sandals and a crimson bikini.

    The date is February 2000. Donald J. Trump hasn’t yet thrown his hat into the ring as a Reform Party candidate, yet he’s already set in motion a machine that 15 years on will turn a voluble political maverick into the front-runner for the Republican Party presidential nomination.

    The woman on the rug is Melania Knauss, a Slovene model, who at 29 is almost a quarter-century younger than her billionaire future husband. The rug is a prop in an Oval Office set mocked up in a Manhattan photo studio. Spread across two pages of the now defunct Talk magazine, Mr. Trump is seen in an inset close up; telescope back from the picture and what you’d see is Mr. Trump seated behind the presidential desk and at his feet his future wife, a woman striking in her beauty and docility.

    If it is always the case in politics that you “play a role,” as Ms. Knauss observed in a caption accompanying those photos, you do this because politics is, above all else, “a business.”

    Observers of the business and ongoing theater of a Trump candidacy are bound to be struck by the passive role played by the candidate’s wife, one seeming to predate gender equality, in an embrace of values from an era when a potential first lady might be less likely to have served as her husband’s former law firm mentor (as Michelle Obama once was) than his carpet ornament.

    “Why do we not see her?” Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, asked recently, referring to Mrs. Trump’s near invisibility on the campaign trail, her sole appearance a wordless photo op for which she smiled prettily as her husband announced his candidacy. “One reason is that Republicans take a traditional view of marriage,” Mr. Luntz said. “And she is not a traditional spouse.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/fashion/melania-trump-the-silent-partner.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1

  7. 7.

    Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA

    November 3, 2015 at 10:13 am

    …members of the Iraqi Governing Council traveled to Washington in January 2004 for Mr. Bush’s State of the Union address, his first since the invasion. Seated in the gallery, near the first lady, Laura Bush, was Mr. Chalabi.

    The next morning, at a meeting of the National Security Council, Mr. Bush turned to Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, and asked how Mr. Chalabi had managed to get in. No one could say.

    Yep, that was back when the grownups were in charge.

    (This was a thing with them. IIRC, they never said exactly how Jeff/James Gannon/Guckert/Rentboy repeatedly got into the White House either.)

  8. 8.

    Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA

    November 3, 2015 at 10:15 am

    @Thoughtful Today:

    If you didn’t fall for the Iraq War Lie you aren’t a Serious Person.

    … I’m told.

    And if we’re told often enough, it becomes true.

  9. 9.

    Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA

    November 3, 2015 at 10:17 am

    @rikyrah: She’s perfect.

  10. 10.

    Chris

    November 3, 2015 at 10:21 am

    Sadly, I suspect half the country will simply take this as proof that “them hajjis can’t be trusted.”

    Well, no, that’s taking things too far. Most of the country probably doesn’t even remember who he is.

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    November 3, 2015 at 10:28 am

    Hitchens was as wrong as it’s possible to be about Iraq and too stubborn to admit it when it was obvious to everyone else on the planet. He was a sexist pig quite often and was possessed of many other defects. But I wouldn’t put him in the same category as “dead? good!” characters like Chalabi (and future HOFers Limbaugh, Cheney and Kissinger).

  12. 12.

    Paul in KY

    November 3, 2015 at 10:28 am

    @rikyrah: I think ‘Melania’ is an Asian province in Risk. One of the ones you usually just have 1 army counter in.

  13. 13.

    Paul in KY

    November 3, 2015 at 10:30 am

    @Betty Cracker: I’m fine with him being in that category. As a supposed ‘liberal’ he gave a lot of cover (at one time) to those on the right who were hawking the fiasco.

    Evidently, Saddam drank him under the table one night & he never forgave him…

  14. 14.

    Iowa Old Lady

    November 3, 2015 at 10:31 am

    Back from voting. Only three things on the ballot: mayor, millage for a museum, and one city council seat, though that one had only one candidate, so it wasn’t much of contest. The mayoral election is non-partisan, so no party is marked on the ballot, which means you have to know what you’re doing when you go in there.

  15. 15.

    sharl

    November 3, 2015 at 10:32 am

    Cold medication and clear vision permitting, I’m forming a list in my haid of folks on twitter I reaaaallly want to troll with this news.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    November 3, 2015 at 10:32 am

    @Jerzy Russian: Thanks for making me laugh; I’m having an otherwise crappy morning.

  17. 17.

    Doug!

    November 3, 2015 at 10:34 am

    @Betty Cracker:

    Partly I’d put him in the “dead? good” candidate, because he’d become an embarrassment to everyone, probably including himself. You probably just can’t drink that much for that long without sustaining major brain damage. He was a talented writer when he was young.

  18. 18.

    Frankensteinbeck

    November 3, 2015 at 10:35 am

    @rikyrah:

    “One reason is that Republicans take a traditional view of marriage,” Mr. Luntz said. “And she is not a traditional spouse.”

    Hilarious, because she’s exactly a traditional spouse*.

    *For the magical mid-1900s period that conservatives pretend is ‘tradition’. They can’t even get their own fake history right.

  19. 19.

    Jerzy Russian

    November 3, 2015 at 10:38 am

    @Gin & Tonic: Wait, you were able to read that?

  20. 20.

    benw

    November 3, 2015 at 10:39 am

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    which means you have to know what you’re doing when you go in there.

    A phrase that many people could usefully apply to the voting booth, wars in the Middle East, and the bedroom.

  21. 21.

    MattF

    November 3, 2015 at 10:41 am

    @Jerzy Russian: You’d better re-encode it.

  22. 22.

    EZSmirkzz

    November 3, 2015 at 10:42 am

    If I am you, and you are me, and we are all in this together, why didn’t I know about this post before it was posted?

    Modern technology frightens and confuses me.

  23. 23.

    Gin & Tonic

    November 3, 2015 at 10:44 am

    @Jerzy Russian: I used my decoder ring.

  24. 24.

    Cacti

    November 3, 2015 at 10:49 am

    GOPer Fred Thompson also kicked the bucket today from a recurrence of lymphoma.

    I guess the people who brought up health concerns when he was running for POTUS had a point after all.

  25. 25.

    MomSense

    November 3, 2015 at 10:51 am

    Didn’t many of the “moderate” Syrian rebel groups join IS? The notion that the U.S. could have fixed this situation is fantastical thinking.

  26. 26.

    bystander

    November 3, 2015 at 10:57 am

    @Betty Cracker: I’ll take that as license to fantasize, so I would add Mitch McConnell, Dick Armey and Ma Barker, er, Bush.

  27. 27.

    Jerzy Russian

    November 3, 2015 at 10:57 am

    @MattF: I have got a crew of COBOL programmers implementing rot-52 for another factor of two increase in complexity. Further transmissions may be infrequent as my communications have been severely compromised. Damn those University of Chicago trained geniuses!

  28. 28.

    bystander

    November 3, 2015 at 10:59 am

    @Cacti: Yeah, we could have been at the end of Fred’s second term and watching the coronation of VP Giuliani.

    Thanks, Obama.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    November 3, 2015 at 11:01 am

    @rikyrah:

    Knowing the Republican base, I’m assuming one of the reasons she doesn’t speak in public is that she has a foreign accent, which would send some of them into a frenzy of terror.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    November 3, 2015 at 11:05 am

    @Betty Cracker:

    Hitchens gets a “Dead? Good!”

    Cheney, Limbaugh, and Kissinger get fuckeulogies, as pioneered by John Oliver.

  31. 31.

    Steve M.

    November 3, 2015 at 11:06 am

    @Betty Cracker: He was right about a number of things, and he wasn’t a war criminal first and foremost. But when the opportunity presented itself for him to enable war criminals, that’s what he did, even though he would have told you to his last breath that he was supporting the war of his own hero fantasies, not the war actually being conducted by the actually existing criminal warmongers. That’s no excuse. I hope he’s rotting in hell.

    Oh, and he was a sexist pig and an overrated prose stylist as well.

  32. 32.

    D58826

    November 3, 2015 at 11:10 am

    totally offtopic but only in America land of the ‘patriotic’ gun owner and where a bull is more important than people. From huffington:.

    COUNCIL, Idaho (AP) — A crash between a car and a bull near a tiny Idaho town turned into a bizarre tragedy when an armed rancher confronted Idaho deputies planning to shoot the animal that charged rescuers, leading to a gun battle that left the well-known businessman dead, authorities said Monday.
    A Subaru station wagon struck a bull on a highway Sunday just north of Council, a town of roughly 800 people, and Adams County sheriff’s deputies responded to the crash. The injured bull began charging emergency responders as they worked to get the driver and passenger out of the car, said Idaho State Police, the agency that is investigating the shooting.
    “The bull was very agitated and was aggressive to emergency services, as well as the other cars coming up and down the highway,” Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman said.
    Jack Yantis, the bull’s owner, arrived with a rifle just as deputies decided to put down the animal. There was an altercation, and Yantis and two deputies all fired their weapons, State Police said in a statement.
    Yantis died at the scene, and one deputy suffered a minor injury. The bull also was shot and killed.
    Both deputies, whose names have not been released, were placed on paid leave.
    “To the best of my knowledge, this is the first officer-involved shooting that Adams County has ever had,” Zollman said. “This is going to be a big hit to this community. The gentleman involved, Mr. Yantis, was a well-known cattle rancher around here. It’s just a sad deal for everybody involved, for the whole community.”
    Both people inside the Subaru were taken to a local hospital by air ambulance. Their conditions and names were not known Monday.

  33. 33.

    trollhattan

    November 3, 2015 at 11:11 am

    @rikyrah:
    Luntz is a lying fvck. Ditching spouses is practically a Republican requirement and short of that, cheating.

  34. 34.

    trollhattan

    November 3, 2015 at 11:12 am

    @D58826:
    Who gets the steaks?

  35. 35.

    Nemo_N

    November 3, 2015 at 11:15 am

    What is Hitchens supposed to be famous for anyway? I have never been able to grasp it. It’s like, a bunch of people say he is great and that should be all the evidence we need for it.

  36. 36.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    November 3, 2015 at 11:17 am

    I’m not a professional cryptographer, but many of my friends are, and I can tell you that Chalabi would probably have a better chance of putting together his own H-bomb than of breaking these codes himself in his spare time.

    My job requires me to be at least semi-expert on the subject. No single human being could break those codes on their own. It didn’t happen.

  37. 37.

    amk

    November 3, 2015 at 11:20 am

    @Nemo_N:

    What is Hitchens supposed to be famous for anyway?

    lefty snarls?

  38. 38.

    SatanicPanic

    November 3, 2015 at 11:22 am

    @trollhattan: With his marital history Trump would make a great House Speaker if he doesn’t get elected president.

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    November 3, 2015 at 11:22 am

    @trollhattan:
    I don’t think you want to eat steak from a bull that was killed with lead bullets. As I understand, there’s some risk of lead poisoning.

  40. 40.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    November 3, 2015 at 11:23 am

    Didn’t many of the “moderate” Syrian rebel groups join IS?

    @MomSense: Yes. We’re sending them weapons and GoPro cameras so they can make better snuff films. When Putin is backing the side of civilization you need to rethink what you are doing.

    The notion that the U.S. could have fixed this situation is fantastical thinking.

    That’s being charitable. Both in Syria and Libya, this was as inevitable as the sunrise.

  41. 41.

    SatanicPanic

    November 3, 2015 at 11:26 am

    @Nemo_N: I consider myself fairly literate but I always felt like his writing was hard to decipher. Probably on purpose, because when I finally did figure out what he was saying it usually wasn’t all that profound.

  42. 42.

    Bobby Thomson

    November 3, 2015 at 11:27 am

    @Cacti: that was a few days ago, actually. He looked like Larry Hagman at the end.

  43. 43.

    Mike in NC

    November 3, 2015 at 11:27 am

    Will Dick Cheney lead the neocon delegation to Chalabi’s funeral? Or more likely, pretend he never heard of the guy?

  44. 44.

    Bobby Thomson

    November 3, 2015 at 11:28 am

    Does Chalabi’s widow get a pension for his faithful service to Iran?

  45. 45.

    Tim C.

    November 3, 2015 at 11:31 am

    I know this comes close to saying I’m aware of all internet traditions, but I never heard of Hitchens until the run-up and support of the Iraq debacle. Was anyone aware of him before that? Was he pushed to the forefront because he was the media-approved “liberal” supporter of the war?

  46. 46.

    gratuitous

    November 3, 2015 at 11:31 am

    I’m glad it was mentioned up-thread, because it should never be forgotten that Mr. Chalabi was an honored guest in the First Lady’s area at George W. Bush’s 2004 State of the Whatever Address. This man was a Republican War Machine creation through and through, and his participation in the activities that brought about so many thousands of deaths should follow him forever.

  47. 47.

    NonyNony

    November 3, 2015 at 11:31 am

    @Steve M.:

    I hope he’s rotting in hell.

    Hitchens didn’t believe in Hell.

    I hope that 50 years from now he’s forgotten by all but a small group of specialists in an obscure English department somewhere – and that even they hold his work in contempt. It’s the only kind of hell he would have recognized while he was alive.

  48. 48.

    Amir Khalid

    November 3, 2015 at 11:33 am

    @Mike in NC:
    The funeral should be over by now, assuming Shiites are like us Sunnis and tend to bury their dead within 24 hours. Besides, I thought Darth Cheney was afraid to travel abroad, lest he be arrested for war crimes while on a layover.

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    November 3, 2015 at 11:37 am

    I admit…I thought he was Black for awhile there. Still give him the side eye.

    ……………………………………………

    Tom Jones to get his DNA tested for black ancestry because ‘a lot of

    black people still tell me I’m just passing as white’

    It is unusual.

    Singer Tom Jones plans to get his DNA tested to find out if he has some black ancestry, he told The Times of London magazine in an interview published Saturday.

    The 75-year-old Welshman gained international fame in a career that has spanned over 50 years with hits like “It’s Not Unusual,” “What’s New Pussycat” and “She’s a Lady.”

    Jones, whose parents were Welsh and English, said his signature baritone voice and thick, curly hair has prompted questions about his race for years.

    “A lot of people still think I’m black,” Jones said. “When I first came to America, people who had heard me sing on the radio would be surprised that I was white when they saw me. Because of my hair a lot of black people still tell me I’m just passing as white.”

    http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/tom-jones-dna-tested-black-ancestry-article-1.2420821

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    November 3, 2015 at 11:37 am

    @Amir Khalid:
    I just cut around that bit.

  51. 51.

    The Golux

    November 3, 2015 at 11:37 am

    This brings to mind a great line from “Get Your War On”:

    My friend in the State Department told me, “If you see what looks like a mushroom cloud over Iraq, don’t worry – it’s not the smoking gun. It’s just Ahmad Chalabi blowing more smoke out of his ass.”

  52. 52.

    Amir Khalid

    November 3, 2015 at 11:40 am

    @Tim C.:
    Christopher Hitchens was something of a celebrity as a journalist/public intellectual. Also something of a bad boy. There’s an infamous incident where he took out Little Chris and showed it to a woman journo who was interviewing him.

  53. 53.

    beltane

    November 3, 2015 at 11:41 am

    @Tim C.: I first heard of Hitchins in the late 1990s when he was often on TV in the role of a left-wing critic of Bill Clinton.

  54. 54.

    Poopyman

    November 3, 2015 at 11:42 am

    @Mike in NC: Yes, Lynne is getting the formal parka out of storage for it.

  55. 55.

    eemom

    November 3, 2015 at 12:09 pm

    Drop your bombs between the minarets

    That’s a Soft Cell tune, right?

    /for Omnes

  56. 56.

    pete

    November 3, 2015 at 12:12 pm

    @NonyNony: Why on earth would an English department bother with Hitchens? He had a facile but extremely superficial brain, the kind of verbal dexterity that plays best after about seven double scotches, a genuine talent for self-promotion, and — it has to be admitted — a certain taste for literature he could never emulate. He was a nasty piece of work as a fake leftist at Oxford (we were there at the same time), a nastier one as he made himself a TV reputation slandering the Clintons and their friends, and an absolute moral monster (and hypocrite) in the last decade of his life as a fascist stooge. He’ll be remembered in bars until his drinking buddies die off, but none of his writings will live.

  57. 57.

    Lurking Canadian

    November 3, 2015 at 12:12 pm

    To anyone with just a little technical knowledge, the idea that someone with could break strong cryptography, or was a genius no less because they published a couple of abstract algebra papers, is really out-loud laughable.

    I take umbrage at this. The bar of “genius” is WAY lower than the bar of “able to singlehandedly hack the NSA”. I know just enough about abstract algebra to say that hell, yes, anybody who can publish in that field is a genius.

  58. 58.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    November 3, 2015 at 12:26 pm

    @Tim C.: He was a hell of a writer at times. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind when he know it was controversial. He was a loud and proud atheist. He wrote a scathing book about Mother Theresa and the industry built-up around her.

    Here’s a transcript of a show on his book Why Orwell Matters for a taste.

    Yes, he was wrong about Iraq. He was a troglodyte in many of his views. He seemed to go off the deep end when his friend and colleague Salman Rushdie was put under the fatwah.

    He was unique.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  59. 59.

    Calouste

    November 3, 2015 at 12:29 pm

    @eemom: It’s a post by Doug!, so of course it’s the Clash.

  60. 60.

    pete

    November 3, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    @Lurking Canadian: Define genius down enough and anyone who can do something you can’t becomes a genius. I prefer the older definition.

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 3, 2015 at 12:34 pm

    @eemom: Gah!

  62. 62.

    pseudonymous in nc

    November 3, 2015 at 12:44 pm

    To re-coin what Leavis said of the Sitwells, Hitchens belongs to the history of publicity not literature.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    November 3, 2015 at 12:47 pm

    Heard that.

    Thought: “Ahmed Chalabi dies. Goes straight to hell.”

    I wonder if people will be “Cheneying” on his gravesite.

  64. 64.

    Cermet

    November 3, 2015 at 1:08 pm

    Now if cheney the bloody hands and his sock puppet, bush wack would quickly follow their pet dog, the world would be a bit cleaner.

  65. 65.

    sharl

    November 3, 2015 at 1:13 pm

    @gratuitous: Yes to everything you said, especially this bit that I’m sorry didn’t occur to me immediately:

    it should never be forgotten that Mr. Chalabi was an honored guest in the First Lady’s area at George W. Bush’s 2004 State of the Whatever Address.

    Yes, good ol’ Ahmad, Friend of Laura. One of my favorite Kevin Drum posts of all time, in a very bittersweet kinda way.

  66. 66.

    gratuitous

    November 3, 2015 at 1:16 pm

    When you can’t say it better yourself, quote someone else. In this case, George Galloway to Christopher Hitchens’ smug face:

    Before the hearing began, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow even had some scorn left over to bestow generously upon the pro-war writer Christopher Hitchens. “You’re a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay,” Mr Galloway informed him. “Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink,” he added later, ignoring Mr Hitchens’s questions and staring intently ahead. “And you’re a drink-soaked …” Eventually Mr Hitchens gave up. “You’re a real thug, aren’t you?” he hissed, stalking away.

    Ooh, “You’re a real thug, aren’t you?” Burn city there, Chris.

  67. 67.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    November 3, 2015 at 1:49 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    Oddly, that’s the second celebrity literal dick-waving story I’ve heard today (apparently actor Dolph Lundgren is notorious in the hotel industry).

    If that ever happened to me, I don’t know how I would be able to stop laughing. It’s just such an absurd thing to do.

  68. 68.

    Calouste

    November 3, 2015 at 2:12 pm

    @gratuitous: Hitchens vs Galloway is like the World Series of self-promotion.

  69. 69.

    Doug!

    November 3, 2015 at 6:09 pm

    @rikyrah:

    For a white R&B/soul singer, what higher praise can there be?

  70. 70.

    Doug!

    November 3, 2015 at 6:10 pm

    @eemom:

    Ha ha!

  71. 71.

    Bill Murray

    November 3, 2015 at 7:59 pm

    @Doug!: I’m somewhat surprised you picked Rock the Casbah rather than Straight to Hell

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