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Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Excellent Read: ” The Man Who Gave Us ISIS”

Excellent Read: ” The Man Who Gave Us ISIS”

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Aram Rosten, who seems to have some expertise, writes a Buzzfeed obit for Ahmad Chalabi:

If not for the man named Ahmad Chalabi, the United States probably would not have invaded Iraq in 2003. If not for the Iraq War, as a senior CIA official flatly told BuzzFeed News earlier this year, there would be no ISIS. Indeed, the life of the charismatic and obsessive Chalabi, who died Tuesday of heart failure at 71, led to devastating and unpredicted results that will reverberate for decades.

Before he changed American and Middle East history, Chalabi was a failed Iraqi banker accused of massive international financial fraud in the 1980s. But through guile and grit, he managed to transform himself into Saddam Hussein’s most implacable and effective foe. The CIA, in cable traffic, called him Pulsar 1. His followers called him “the Boss” or “the Doctor.”…

… More than anyone else in the late 1990s and the early part of the Bush administration, Chalabi had planted the seed in influential American thinkers, chiefly neoconservatives, that removing Saddam Hussein from power was a strategic imperative. But he did far more. Funded by the U.S., he fed bogus information and propaganda to the American press and to intelligence agencies.

In spring 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq and, as Chalabi boasted, toppled Saddam, because of him and the Iraqi National Congress. He dressed in a black Hugo Boss T-shirt, and he was flown by the American Air Force to the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya with a small army of ill-trained and chaotic “Free Iraqi Forces.”

Chalabi thought the U.S. would help install him as Saddam’s replacement, and he envisioned riding through Baghdad to cheering crowds of Iraqis, like de Gaulle returning triumphant to France. But that never happened. He had lost his influence in Washington, D.C., and he had too many enemies in the U.S. and Iraq…

Reader Interactions

32Comments

  1. 1.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    You have to open the permalink to comment, and there are no next link/back link buttons? DUMPSTER FIRE!

  5. 5.

    geg6

    I hope that fucker felt his heart seize up and had the realization he was going to die before deep pain set in and he fucking gasped his cursed last.

    Meanwhile, is it possible that PA will elect three Dems to the Supreme Court? 42% reporting says it’s possible but not yet in the bag.

  6. 6.

    benw

    @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): the next/previous post buttons are now grey boxes with white arrows in them on each edge of the browser that stay with the screen even when you scroll. They’re one of the best parts of the site redesign. However, those buttons do seem to be gone from the mobile site.

  7. 7.

    Schlemazel

    “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

    He won’t need a large grave but will need many to hold all his evil.

  9. 9.

    jl

    @Gimlet: Probably true. And IIRC Chalabi was as delusional in his own way as Cheney was, and in over his head as much as W was. I think Chalabi had the US govt (aka Cheney Inc.) help him set up some kind of Iraqi foreign legion that he would lead at the latter stages of the invasion, and would provide him with some sort of power base or influence in the new Iraq. And IIRC it dissolved into chaos and disappeared as soon as it entered Iraq.

  11. 11.

    Mike G

    @Gimlet:

    Bush/Cheney were begging to be told what they wanted to hear, Chalabi just supplied the eager and willing neocon demand for sweet little lies about Iraq.

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    Chalabi was just a convenient chump thrown in front of an ignorant press. Bush and Cheney were determined to attack Iraq. Without Chalabi, they would have come up with another story. The seeds of ISIS, and the dream of a unified caliphate, existed long before Bush and crew set off on the Iraq misadventure. Authoritarian and secular régimes created pressures independent of US and Western interests in the region.

  13. 13.

    Ella in NM

    Ummm, major problems with the site noted HERE. The Mayhew/Bevins post is now at the top of every other post. Seems like John needs to apologize for all the whiners who don’t like new stuff–we actually just like stuff to make sense.

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    A look at Chalabi from a respected and experienced reporter who was there.

    Funny, isn’t it, how few seem to mention Chalabi’s Petra bank Enron-like scandal and absconding ahead of prosecution (and subsequent conviction in absentia) in Jordan with untold millions?

    OT: Oh joy, now the Facebook Social Plug-ins widget is on BJ, which slows front page loading time to a crawl. And, intermittently showing up, Double Click, which may as well be digi-speak for incipient malware. Thankfully, Ghostery blocks ’em on Firefox.

  15. 15.

    Gravenstone

    When viewed from the front page, your post and Richard’s post above it are combined under your title.

  16. 16.

    beltane

    @schrodinger’s cat: Absolutely. Chalabi was Dick Cheney’s useful idiot. The invasion of Iraq and the destruction of the Middle East were almost inevitable from the moment the Flordia recount stopped.

  18. 18.

    Mike in NC

    @schrodinger’s cat: Cheney settled on Chalabi as a pliant lapdog who would do the bidding of the Bush administration. Topple Saddam and his sons, so the arguement went, and Americans would be welcomed as liberators with flowers and sweets, while we quietly went about plundering the Iraqi oil reserves.

    But alas, Chalabi wasn’t going to be the new George Washington of the Arab Spring. Merely another grifter who ironically conned the neocons.

  19. 19.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Ella in NM: It’s not quite that the most recent post is at the top of every post; it’s that every post starts will all of the things posted more recently.

  20. 20.

    beltane

    @Gravenstone: As “the decider”, W deserves the ultimate blame. In theory, he chose whom to listen to, and as Commander in Chief he was in control of what course of action to take.

  22. 22.

    Zinsky

    Chalabi was a useful idiot for an unelected gang of greedy, evil men. He is in Hell now, where he belongs, hopefully warming things up for Richard Bruce Cheney and Dubya.

  24. 24.

    Keith G

    @Ella in NM:

    Seems like John needs to apologize for all the whiners who don’t like new stuff–we actually just like stuff to make sense.

    Been hittin the cactus juice, have ye?

  25. 25.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Brachiator:

    Chalabi was just a convenient chump thrown in front of an ignorant press. Bush and Cheney were determined to attack Iraq. Without Chalabi, they would have come up with another story.

    Kinda-sorta.

    National Security Archive:

    Iraq Liberation Act

    After several covert operations against Iraq in the mid-1990s failed, increasingly fraught anti-Iraq rhetoric, endorsed by hawkish Democrats as well as Republicans, culminated in President Bill Clinton’s 1998 signing of the Iraq Liberation Act, which partially endorsed the neoconservative agenda. [Doc. 2] The act established regime change as official U.S. policy and provided funds for opposition groups and propaganda operations, but did not call for direct U.S. military action. The Clinton administration still did not view Iraq as a high priority, however, and neoconservatives were disappointed by the government’s lack of follow-up after the act was signed.

    Their cause clearly entered a new era when George W. Bush was elected president. Two prominent neoconservatives with a long history of regime-change advocacy, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had served on candidate Bush’s political advisory team; after he took office he appointed a remarkable number of Iraq hawks to positions of power, including his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld; deputy secretary Wolfowitz; under secretary for policy, Douglas Feith; and Perle (an advisory role to Rumsfeld.) Many had a long-established relationship with Ahmad Chalabi through academic circles or activities sponsored by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, including Wolfowitz, Perle, and Rumsfeld, as well as Vice President Cheney. Cheney, before the inauguration, had asked the outgoing defense secretary to provide Bush with a policy briefing, and identified Iraq as topic A. (Note 5)

    “Regime Change”

    Chalabi’s comment from the time seems apt: “I think the initial statements of the new appointees are very useful for us …” (Note 6) Outside observers hoped that the incoming secretary of state, Colin Powell, who unlike the neoconservative faction had genuine military experience and a more nuanced view of the Middle East, might counterbalance a predictable anti-Iraq juggernaut in the new administration. In presumed response to the political environment he had entered, however, Powell asked his staff for background on Iraq regime change policy – three days after Bush’s inauguration [Doc. 3].

    When the new administration’s principals (agency heads) met for the first time at the end of January it was to discuss the Middle East, including Bush’s planned disengagement from efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the issue of “How Iraq is destabilizing the region.” Bush directed the Pentagon to look into military options for Iraq and the CIA to improve intelligence on the country. (Note 7) At a February 1 principals meeting Paul Wolfowitz lobbied for arming the Iraqi opposition. (Note 8) When the deputies (agency seconds-in-command) committee met in April for its first discussion of terrorism since the president took office and counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke attempted to focus on Osama bin Laden and the Taliban – five months before 9/11 — Wolfowitz tried to change the subject to Iraq. (Note 9)

    They were birds of a feather, all working together for a similar goal (though each had a different ultimate prize in mind). Yes, Bush and his team wanted Iraq, but Chalabi was more than some US version of Baghdad Bob.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    Svensker

    Is it just me, or do all the posts have the same text body? Maybe I should try a different browser. Or more drugs. Maybe both!

  32. 32.

    mapaghimagsik

    Obamacare called and wants its rollout back

    /runrunrun

    ETA: It turned out beautiful in the end, so there’s hope!

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