Billmon is back

Billmon is back

Billmon's back...and you really need to read his entry of re-entry.
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NeoCons still love Chalabi-Inconvenient White House Friend

NeoCons Still Love Chalabi-
The Inconvenient White House Friend

Would their vociferous defense of con-man Chalabi make the NeoCons anti-American? Have NeoCons become inconvenient friends of the White House?
Wait! Some of the NeoCons are members of the White House administration!

From the New Yorker-
The Manipulator by Jane Mayer
At a moment when President Bush was struggling with multiple political burdens, Chalabi had become an inconvenient friend..

....A former admirer of Chalabi’s was alarmed by his turn toward Shiite nationalism, and said that his actions risked unleashing sectarian political strife that could pitch the country into civil war. He said, “There’s an irresponsibility in how he’s approaching this. It’s reckless. Iraq needs a stable government. But Ahmad’s pushing his private agenda at the cost of the country’s needs.”

....Chalabi claimed that his relationship with Tehran was purely expedient. “There are geopolitical reasons to be friendly with Iran,” he said. “Iran has the longest border with Iraq. Also, Iran is a much stronger state than Iraq, with three times the population. So strategically it’s not a good idea to be on bad terms. My good relations were not a secret from the U.S.”

.....Chalabi himself accused the C.P.A. of corruption, telling me, “There are so many bribes and kickbacks!"

.....One of his I.N.C. confidants told me that Chalabi might spend the summer repositioning himself as a fierce critic of Brahimi’s interim government, with an eye toward the coming election. Chalabi himself was less specific when I asked him about his plans. He said simply, “I think I have more of a future than the C.P.A.”

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From the New York Times-
Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case to the White House by Elisabeth Bumiller

On May 22, according to several of these Chalabi supporters, a small delegation of them marched into the West Wing office of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to complain about the administration's abrupt change of heart about Chalabi and to register their concerns about the course of the war in Iraq.

"There is a smear campaign underway, and it is being perpetrated by the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and a gaggle of former intelligence officers who have succeeded in planting these stories, which are accepted with hardly any scrutiny," [Richard] Perle, a leading neoconservative, said in an interview. Perle added that the campaign against Chalabi was "an outrageous abuse of power" by U.S. government officials in Washington and Baghdad.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who favored going to war in Iraq and was a patron of Chalabi, did not respond to numerous requests this week for an interview.

Wolfowitz's spokesman, Charley Cooper, said in an e-mail that Wolfowitz believed that Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress "have provided valuable operational intelligence to our military forces in Iraq which has helped save American lives." Cooper added that "Wolfowitz hopes that the events of the last few weeks haven't undermined that."

The current views of Vice President Dick Cheney and Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, are not known. Both strongly supported Chalabi before and during the war in Iraq.

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In a National Review article, NeoCon Michael Ledeen seems disapointed that the Chalabi accusations are serving to slow down his hoped-for war upon the nation of Iran. He's stooping so low as to calling Sidney Blumenthal a liar (point-blank). Ledeen blames the disinformation about Chalabi on Blumenthal, our State Department (meaning Colin Powell), and the Iranians. This is getting so twisted, my dear readers...I don't even know where to begin telling you just how twisted. We need to get this administration and their corrupt NeoCons out of power before our nation's credibility is completely destroyed.

While I do not share as much (weird) admiration for Chalabi as Christopher Hitchens, I wish to point out that even Hitchens has said:

[Former criticism] has now been replaced with a whole new indictment: that Chalabi tricked the United States into war, possibly on Iran's behalf, and that he has given national security secrets to Iran. The first half of this is grotesque on its face. Even if you assume the worst to be true—that the INC's "defectors" were either mistaken or were conscious, coached fabricators—the fact remains that the crucial presentation of the administration's case on WMD and terrorism was made at the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin Powell, with CIA Director George Tenet sitting right behind him, after those two men most hostile to Chalabi had been closeted together. Nor does the accusation about an alternative "stove pipe" of disinformation, bypassing the usual channels, hold much water (or air, or smoke). Woodward's book Plan of Attack makes it plain that the president was not very impressed with Tenet's ostensible evidence. The plain and overlooked truth is that the administration acted upon the worst assumption about Saddam Hussein..

Chalabi did all he did in his OWN nation's best interests, which is what anyone who LOVES his country might do. But that doesn't mean it was EVER our job to get into his slimy bed and do his bidding. The American public was totally misled, and even the President didn't trust George Tenet's WMD slam-dunk, but he tried to convince America, anyhow.

I disagree with Christopher Hitchens TOTALLY when he absolves Chalabi and Judith Miller of pre-war wrong-doing. Chalabi's misleadings were criminal. Miller, whether negligent or not, was gullible.

Bush will never have an excuse for taking us to unnecessary war, no matter HOW he slices and dices Chalabi.

The NeoCons want to kill off the U.N. by making the public believe they are a totally corrupt institution because of the Oil-for-Food-Program scandal. This is only one reason why NeoCons love Chalabi.

From A World Net Daily (un)Intelligence report:

[He [Chalabi] has also threatened to release damaging details on the corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, which included high U.N. officials, possibly including the son of Secretary-general Kofi Annan.

"I have opened up the investigation of the oil-for-food program, which has cast doubt about the integrity of the U.N. here," Chalabi said. "They don't like this."

But Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell were not to be dissuaded. They are convinced that unless the administration converts Iraq into an international problem, the U.S. will never succeed in leaving Iraq.

The sight of U.S. boys dying daily in Iraq without a clear exit strategy is not seen as a reelection strategy.
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What kind of line is that last line from World Net Daily? I'll tell you--it's a stupid unAmerican line! How about changing that last line to:
"The sight of U.S. men and women dying is f***ing sickening when we all know the war was unnecessary and pimped by Dick Cheney, the NeoCons and Chalabi and taken in by the all-too-war-willing Bush who, in turn, pimped his unnecessary war to the American public with lie after lie"?
None of these people...Bush, Cheney and his NeoCons, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Rice, Chalabi, Judith Miller, hoodwinked pundits.. not one of them was right. Wake up! It's time we truly started supporting our troops. We need the U.N. and we could certainly use new leadership in Washington.


The U.S. (including John Negroponte) was complicit in the oil-for-food corruption and the NeoCons and the Bush administration know it. We all know it. Negroponte's been given a new position of American power in Iraq. The Bush administration needs to cover any news that would make him look worse than he already does after his death-squad days. Perhaps Chalabi had "the goods" on Negroponte.

The NeoCons want suppport for Chalabi and they do not CARE that our troops' lives are endangered every day we fail to get world cooperation on Iraq. They are pushing stories to the public to slow down the possibility of U.N. involvement in Iraq...all for their own agenda.

They are fighting American diplomacy tooth and nail.

I submit to you that these NeoCons are acting as anti-Americans.

Rush Limbaugh is not acting in America's best interests, either, in pumping all the oil-for-food he can get partisan mileage out of.

The U.N. is our hope for world cooperation to get Iraq on its feet (rather than further destroy their weakened institutions). Chalabi has been instrumental in helping the NeoCons push this Oil-For-Food story. While the matter deserves investigation, it does not deserve front-page headlines at a time when we need a U.N. resolution and cooperation on Iraq.

The NeoCon war against the U.N. does not serve our country's best interests. It does NOT support our American soldiers.


Article worth reading:

Last Man Standing by Tom Engelhardt