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Chalabi's house raided
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| MisterOpus1 |
Looks like some people are finally smelling the bull from Chalabi. It amazes me just how stupid some folks in the Pentagon and DOD were for trusting him for so long. Guess they just liked being told what they wanted to hear, even though it came from a fugitive:
| quote: | U.S. Troops Raid Chalabi's Headquarters in Baghdad
Thu May 20, 2004 06:10 AM ET
By Luke Baker
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops and Iraqi police mounted a raid on Thursday on the headquarters of the party led by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite who has become increasingly estranged from Washington.
The soldiers raided the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a nearby house also used by Chalabi, and removed computers, files and equipment.
INC spokesman Haider Moussawi said the troops had 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, was not detained.
"They have been putting political pressure on us for weeks. It's part of an attempted character assassination and it's politically motivated," he said.
"When someone stands up independently and puts his views firmly it appears the Americans don't like it."
U.S. officials said on Tuesday the Pentagon had cut off its funding of some $340,000 a month to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that decision "was made in light of the process of transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people."
"We felt it was no longer appropriate for us to continue funding in that fashion," he told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
"There's been some very valuable intelligence that's been gathered through that process that's been very valuable for our forces. But we will seek to obtain that in the future through normal intelligence channels."
CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE
U.S. officials have said they had doubts about the intelligence the INC provided and about whether Chalabi was motivated chiefly by a desire for power.
An exile who lived abroad for more than four decades, Chalabi was convicted in absentia of bank fraud in 1992 by a military court in Jordan, where he had founded a bank that failed. He says the charges were politically motivated.
The Pentagon flew him into Iraq with a group of followers as the U.S.-led invasion was winding up last year, giving him an opportunity to establish a political base, but he has struggled to create support.
Chalabi has many critics elsewhere in the U.S. government, notably at the CIA, which suspected his group may have been penetrated by Saddam Hussein's agents before the war and which questioned the intelligence information it provided.
The State Department also had its doubts and resented the Pentagon's support for Chalabi. State Department officials questioned whether he could emerge as a national leader.
In its prewar role, Chalabi's INC directed Iraqi defectors to the U.S. government to provide intelligence that critics now say was largely spun to prod the United States into taking action against Baghdad.
U.S. officials said in February that an Iraqi who had been the source for Washington's prewar claim that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs had fabricated the allegation. The man had been introduced to U.S. intelligence by Chalabi's group.
No stockpiles of banned unconventional weapons have been found in Iraq.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtm...storyID=5204215 |
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| BadBadNeil |
| at least they only wasted $340,000/month :rolleyes: |
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| Renegade |
Can anyone say they're actually suprised about this? I mean, they put a wanted criminal in charge of a country he hadn't visited for 40 years, despite the fact that his own people (and virtually all Arabic people) hate him and even their own intelligence agencies cast aspersions on his credibility as a leader - what did they think was going to happen? The concerning part of this, however, is that they don't seem to have dismissed him because they've finally realised what everyone else knew all along (I was talking about how inappropriate his appointment would be before it'd even been announced), but because he'd stopped towing the western line. From a different Reuters article:
| quote: | Chalabi, a former exile who returned to Iraq after Saddam Hussein's overthrow and was viewed by some in Washington as a possible leader, said he believed the raid had been carried out because of his deepening standoff with U.S. authorities.
He has been at odds with Washington over a number of issues, including exactly how much power would be handed to Iraqis when the country regains sovereignty on July 1.
"Let my people go. Let my people be free. It is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs," said Chalabi.
[...]
In the past few months, Chalabi has repeatedly crossed swords with U.S. authorities in Washington and Baghdad. On trips to the United States he has criticized U.S. policy in Iraq, seemingly in an effort to shore up support at home. |
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....storyID=5208564
Suffice to say, you know you're doing something wrong when even your hand-picked puppets start rebelling against you. ;)
I'd be interested to see how the US justify these actions over the next few days. I'd especially like to hear why he was considered such good leadership material prior to the conflict but all of a sudden - after having the gall to question the direction of the US occupation - there is enough suspicion about his character to kick his door down in the middle of the night and search his residence? There are only two reasons for doing this:
1) As Chalabi says, he may be the victim of a "targetted attack" by the US administration as a result of his increasingly dissenting views. If this is the case, then this reflects very poorly on the methodology of the US occupation and severely weakens their claimed commitment to Iraqi democracy (how can things improve if the INC/IGC can't speak their mind without being intimidated?).
2) The US have finally worked out that he lacks the qualities necessary to be a leader in the rebuilding of Iraq. If this is the case, why did it take so long to work out? What if we'd only worked this out after we'd withdrawn and left him in power? How do we know that other members of the INC aren't of a similarly questionable pedigree?
In either case, this seems like a monumental cock-up. Could make for some interesting developments. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
Can anyone say they're actually suprised about this? I mean, they put a wanted criminal in charge of a country he hadn't visited for 40 years, despite the fact that his own people (and virtually all Arabic people) hate him and even their own intelligence agencies cast aspersions on his credibility as a leader - what did they think was going to happen? The concerning part of this, however, is that they don't seem to have dismissed him because they've finally realised what everyone else knew all along (I was talking about how inappropriate his appointment would be before it'd even been announced), but because he'd stopped towing the western line. From a different Reuters article:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....storyID=5208564
Suffice to say, you know you're doing something wrong when even your hand-picked puppets start rebelling against you. ;)
I'd be interested to see how the US justify these actions over the next few days. I'd especially like to hear why he was considered such good leadership material prior to the conflict but all of a sudden - after having the gall to question the direction of the US occupation - there is enough suspicion about his character to kick his door down in the middle of the night and search his residence? There are only two reasons for doing this:
1) As Chalabi says, he may be the victim of a "targetted attack" by the US administration as a result of his increasingly dissenting views. If this is the case, then this reflects very poorly on the methodology of the US occupation and severely weakens their claimed commitment to Iraqi democracy (how can things improve if the INC/IGC can't speak their mind without being intimidated?).
2) The US have finally worked out that he lacks the qualities necessary to be a leader in the rebuilding of Iraq. If this is the case, why did it take so long to work out? What if we'd only worked this out after we'd withdrawn and left him in power? How do we know that other members of the INC aren't of a similarly questionable pedigree?
In either case, this seems like a monumental cock-up. Could make for some interesting developments. |
Nice insight - I'm inclined to go with point #2, though it does seem to appear that Chalabi has rebelled more and more. From another article I found, it seems Chalabi was at odds with Washington since the invasion:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/e...t_id=1000514376
| quote: | | There are investigations underway into allegations of corruption on the part of the INC. And it has been reported that Chalabi angered Washington by refusing to hand over Iraqi intelligence files that its militia seized after the Pentagon allowed it into Baghdad shortly after the city fell. |
Among other things that's a nice article pointing out the fallacious writings of Judith Miller from the NYTimes, considering she used Chalabi as a primary source for most of her Iraq pieces in 2002-2003. It would seem that a debate is rising about who started the push for the Iraqi invasion, or who called out Iraq having WMD first - the Bush Admin. or the Press. Some evidence suggests that it may have actually been the Press before the Admin., which is an interesting twist. I'm digressing from the main point, sorry. |
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