BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions

Subject: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: freda underhill
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 08:23 PM

The 'top' Iraqi leader who has no credibility; from Sydney Morning Herald; By Alan Ramsey; April 21, 2004


The ABC's Barrie Cassidy seems better able to spot a headline than a political spiv. Three days ago Cassidy's Sunday morning television chat program Insiders broadcast an "exclusive" interview with Ahmad Chalabi, one of the Bush White House's more coddled members of its puppet Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad.

Chalabi obligingly offered the comment that the Howard Government's tiny noncombatant military commitment should stay in Iraq "until the end".

Most newspapers, including the Herald, reported the interview next morning, variously describing Chalabi as a "key" Iraqi "leader", a "prominent" Iraqi leader or simply a "top" Iraqi. But, like Cassidy, none bothered to make even the most cursory of references to Chalabi's grubby background. To have done so would have destroyed all pretence at credibility.

Yet the material is there in volume.

In November 2002 Robert Dreyfuss wrote, in part, in the liberal US quarterly The American Prospect: "If T.E. Lawrence had been a 21st-century neo-conservative operative instead of a British imperial spy, he'd be Ahmad Chalabi's best friend. Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress, is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neo-conservative strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops - and American oil companies - in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic hegemony.

[non-music copy-paste article deleted - see FAQ for details]
None of this, of course, was reflected in last Sunday's ABC interview, nor in the next day's newspaper reports. Like sheep, they all just sucked up, without question, what Chalabi had to say. Yet the ABC's Peter George nailed Chalabi as the self-serving carpetbagger he is in a Four Corners program in September 2002. Everyone else obviously was just too lazy to look.

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When non-music copy-paste articles fill more than one screen, they should be condensed, and with a link to the entire article. Thanks. Click here for the original article.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 10:55 PM

Chalabi obligingly offered the comment that the Howard Government's tiny noncombatant military commitment should stay in Iraq "until the end".

Ah, yes, "the end". Hmmmm. All I can hear in my mind is Jim Morrison singing...

"This is the end...beautiful friend...of all our glorious plans, the end...of every hope of man...the end...I'll never see your face again..."

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 11:00 PM

Thanks, freda. Good reporting!

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: dianavan
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 03:35 AM

Wow Freda! This is what needs to be known. Its for this kind of information that I belong to mudcat. Thanks so much.

I knew Iraq was all about the oil but this says it all.

"Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress, is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neo-conservative strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops - and American oil companies - in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic hegemony."

Thanks again.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: GUEST,freda
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 03:47 AM

I think its also of note that, as the article explains, he:

1. is scorned by most of America's national security establishment,
2 ostracised in the Arab world
3 has no support or poweer base in Iraq

4 is wanted in Jordan for stealing hundreds of millions of depositors' dollars from a bank he managed which collapsed

AND

5 that Chalabi, "more than any other person", had been the key supplier of faulty intelligence to the CIA about Iraq's purported "stockpiles" of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

How did someone like that get to be placed by Bush in Iraq as the next head of government? He's a crook!

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 08:47 AM

Being a crook is a requirement for serving in the Bush administration, or working in the upper echelons of the petroleum industry. And if you are both, all the better. He was put into the position he is in, because he was bought and paid for by the Bush administration, the same way that bin Laden was bought and paid for, and Saddam was bought and paid for...

This shouldn't come as a surprise though, should it? It just underscores how bad the US Iraq policy is, and why people should abandon the Democratic party in the US to vote for Nader this time, as he is the only viable anti-war candidate remaining.

While plenty of people have chastised Nader and Kucinich for their anti-war position saying they would phase out US troops in Iraq within 6 months as the "cut-and-run" strategy, we have yet to see any cohesive strategy outlined for us come from Bush or Kerry. "Staying the course" isn't going to work, as we've painfully seen in the last month in Iraq. Going to the Security Council and foreign capitals to try and dump the problem at their doorstep isn't exactly a way to reinvigorate our international relations OR get more nations or NATO involved, because the US has allowed the security situation to deteriorate so badly, just so the neo-cons could claim they could "do this war" with a leaner, meaner military force.

Kerry has put himself in the same position that Humphrey was in back in 1968. He is defending an indefensible war, from which we will exit with a "cut-and-run" just as we did in Vietnam. I'm sure Kerry and his handlers see that, but know that to be "electable" in their worldview, requires an extreme militarist position on Iraq and the war on terror.   The situation in Iraq has already deterioriated far beyond what can be fixed by renewed diplomacy efforts by the US.

Just as many of us predicted, this Iraq war has condemned the Iraqi people to a much darker future than we were told. Their country already is disintegrating, and no amount of Fallujah bloodbaths will turn that around anytime soon. Combine that with the disastrous Bush/Sharon Mideast war plan, and it is clear that they have plunged the world into decades long conflicts, doomed the rest of the world to a greatly heightened vulnerability to terrorist attacks, and condemned the people of the Middle East and North Africa to living in poverty, squalor, and violence for the forseeable future.

All so the Anglo American coalition of Britain, the US, and Australia to get the cheapest oil prices for their nations, while the world supply of oil runs out.

We, the Iraqis, the Middle East, and the world, are going to be living with the negative legacy of this administration's "war on terror" for decades to come.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: dianavan
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 04:00 PM

Well said, guest; but please take a mudcat name for yourself so that you might have a little more credibility. Anonymous postings are viewed as cowardice.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 04:14 PM

Thank you, dianavan. I know how anonymous postings are viewed, but am not concerned by it.

Subject: RE: BS: Iraqi Puppet leader embezzled millions
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 04:39 PM

Extremely well said, Guest.