Bell Curve The Law Talking Guy Raised by Republicans U.S. West
Well, he's kind of had it in for me ever since I accidentally ran over his dog. Actually, replace "accidentally" with "repeatedly," and replace "dog" with "son."

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Chalabi

Hi Everyone,

The latest episode in the comedy of errors that is the Bush administration is particularly absurd.

It seems that the primary source for two of the most important of the Neo-Cons justifications for going to war in Iraq - the presence of WMDs and the "Happy Iraqi Theory" - was a double agent for the Iranians. It is all over the press now that Chalabi passed US secrets to the Iranians. Secrets he got from an unnamed US official who let them slip to Chalabi while drunk.

So what will be the next phase of this story? I'm wondering who might have been likely to be drunk with Chalabi? It's well known that Chalabi ran in some pretty high ranking circles. Will the next story be that the White House will start covering up the story because the drunken official (who would be in danger of a very long prison term for espionage) was Feith or Wolfowitz?! Don't bet the farm that it won't be! Consider this: the Republican party claimed that extra marital fellatio is grounds for impeachment. I can't wait for the Republicans to argue that covering up for a drunken incompetent guilty of espionage is not.

Or will the next phase be that the information wasn't just flowing from the US to Iran? Was Chalabi pushing an Iranian agenda among the Neo-cons?! Gee, I wonder what possible reason the Iranians would have to want the US to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein? Could it be that the Iranians foresaw - along with everyone else with half a brain - that a post-Saddam Iraq would be fertile ground for radical political Shiism? It's clear as day that Bush et al have been played for saps. But was Chalabi the conductor or just the first violin?

OH, and by the way....NPR just reported that another batch of thousands of soldiers in Iraq who had been expecting to come home soon will have their deployment in Iraq extended.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny, I actually thought most of this was made up. In fact, I still think that what he did was either not that bad, or, alternatively, that he passed nothing on to the Iranians. I think it's all a cover story to give DoD a reason to take him off the VIP list at next year's state of the union.

As for getting drunk with the Big Boys, I doubt it. Probably some lower level goon.

Raised By Republicans said...

We will see. You're right to be skeptical. I didn't make any postings on this subject until it had been around for a few days. Things like this often pop up and then turn out to be little more than rumors. But its been a while and the story is getting more and more detailed instead of fading away. I think this story is "behaving" like real news.

I don't put any level of incompetent boobery past this administration. I can easily see someone like Feith or Wolfowitz who were big backers of Chalabi and his cousin "curve ball" having a martini too many and bragging about how we're reading the Iranian's mail.

A couple of years ago, I was at the point where I would say, "Oh, that's rediculous, I don't like this administration but they are rational competent people..." I'm about a year past thinking that now.

Raised By Republicans said...

It may not be related but CIA Director, George Tenent, just resigned. Tenet's name has come up as a prominent opponent of Chalabi and his role as a source of US intelligence. Chalabi accuses Tenet of making up accusations about him. Let's see if there are any leaks about why Tenet resigned...

USWest said...

I may be a little late to the party, but I have to comment anyway. I have been told by Arab friends that everyone in the Arab world knew Chalabi was a con. Only the US didn’t know, is what they say. I saw Chalabi on Frontline back in Feb. (I think) and it took me all over 20 seconds to figure out he was a con artist. Talk about a slimy guy. So I have a very hard time believing that decision makers really believed Chalabi. He told them what they wanted to hear. Whether he could be believed or not was irrelevant.

What I am surprised about, Raised by Republicans, is that you haven’t jumped on the news that GW has hired James Sharp as his attorney in case he gets a subpoena from the Grand jury investigating the Valerie Palme scandal. I refer you to http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040604.htmlThat little coal has been quietly simmering for months now. Sharpe is independently wealthy due to the oil industry. Oh, did I mention he is a criminal defense attorney? What does that tell you? If you ain’t got nothin’ to hide, why the lawyer? And to further thicken the plot, Cheney has also sought outside counsel. So there are all sorts of things floating around just waiting to become campaign fodder. I wonder what Lawyer Guy thinks of all this buzz!