Ahmad Chalabi: Iraq's master manipulator
Excerpts of Aram Roston's book, 'The Man Who Pushed America to War'
This is just one of the many busll**** books ****fting the blame on Chalabi
away from the Jews and the Zionist who planned, Organized, financed and
executed the war at the expense of Christian Blood.
First of five parts
By Aram Roston
Investigative producer
NBC News
updated 3:01 a.m. PT, Mon., April. 7, 2008
His inner circle called him The Doctor, because of his Ph.D in
mathematics.
Some of his operatives called him Our Big Brother. The Central
Intelligence
Agency called him by a code name - which intelligence sources reveal as
Pulsar One. Whatever you call him, Ahmad Abdul Hadi Chalabi, a shrewd
Iraqi
Arab from a family of ****ite bankers, literally changed the world. The
United States, which he referred to so respectfully as a "strategic ally,"
had sponsored him, flown him and his people to Iraq, even toppled Saddam
Hussein for him, as he would boast. The Iraq War has many critics and some
fierce defenders, but many insiders on both sides of the debate agree on
this: without Chalabi there would have been no war.
He is a man of large appetites, with a flair for theatrics, and a
brilliant
and untiring mind. He had a single-minded hatred of the sadistic Saddam
Hussein, a loyalty to his own ****ite heritage, and an inexplicable
certitude
in his own entitlement. Chalabi's medium is people, and as an Iraqi exile
his grazing area was America; his genius was his ability to make loyal
friends among adventurous spirits. He epitomized "charismatic leader****p."
Over dinners, lunches, and coffee, he spoke in grand and colorful language
about the human right to freedom, about the delightful world to come in
the
Middle East, about the great things that could be done. As he talked,
Chalabi was physically transformed. What strangers saw as a smug smirk
curled on his fleshy lips disappeared, and was replaced by a wise yet
merry
smile. Whereas once he had a stiff back and clumsy walk, now he appeared
to
have a regal and noble bearing. Some of his closest advisers were
Democrats.
Some were liberals. Some were pro-Israel; others were anti-Zionists. It
didn't
really matter once they met him. But in the end it was notoriously the
recruitment of the American neoconservatives and the hawkish wing of the
Republican Party that got him what he needed. They satisfied his needs,
and
he theirs.
He touched America in three ways. His first success could be called
ideological: he was able to affirm for a generation of thinkers the urgent
need to overthrow Saddam. Toppling Saddam, and ending his aggression and
his
feared weapons of mass destruction, became the keystone of transforming
the
Middle East. Chalabi was not the sole source of this vision, but he was
the
chief intellectual facilitator for a now well-known cadre of hard-liners
whose influence was extraordinary in the early part of the new millennium.
They included Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
John
Hannah, Michael Ledeen and Danielle Pletka. They dined with him and met
him
and conversed, and through well-placed op-eds and clever talking points
and
sound bites, their ideas bled into the mainstream.
Second, Chalabi fed intelligence and sources to journalists and the U.S.
intelligence services. This was, for him, the easiest task. Much of the
world already believed Saddam had WMDs. And Saddam was indeed a sadistic
tyrant. Chalabi's contribution was to give the allegations flesh and
muscle
and specificity. The tidbits he provided were often quickly discredited by
intelligence officers, but they had tremendous impact on public opinion.
His
use of the press helped prepare the political battleground for war. The
New
York Times, CBS News' "60 Minutes," PBS' "Frontline" and Vanity Fair
became
his chosen outlets. The splash from his stories was immense. Saddam, the
intelligence services knew, had no ties to the attacks of 9/11, but as
Chalabi's friend Fouad Ajami wrote once to explain the war, "These
distinctions did not matter; the connection had been made in American
opinion."
Third, Chalabi had political impact that was virtually unheard of for a
foreigner. He used his personal magnetism, lobbying skills and tactical
abilities to merge U.S. policy with his own ambitions. The U.S. Congress
passed a law written largely to achieve his vision and to boost the
fortunes
of his political vehicle, the Iraqi National Congress. He had a battery of
sup****ters on Capitol Hill. U.S. senators like Trent Lott, John McCain,
Sam
Brownback, Joe Lieberman, and Bob Kerrey became his champions. But even
more
im****tant, he knew how to manipulate the key aides who work anonymously in
the back rooms to make Capitol Hill run. He courted key Republicans like
Trent Lott's Randy Scheunemann and House international affairs staffer
Steve
Rademaker, as well as Senate Democratic aides like Chris Straub and Peter
Galbraith.
External Web site
As a younger man, Chalabi had presided over the wholesale collapse of his
family's business empire, a worldwide venture riddled with fraud insider
dealing and disastrous investments. But he was able to bounce back after
locating a rich vein of financing from the U.S. government. American
taxpayers generously funded him and his Iraqi National Congress during his
fifteen-year campaign against Saddam. Although he was not an American, and
in fact distrusted the United States, he moved from one federal agency to
another with the easy grace of a hummingbird drifting from flower to
flower.
First he was funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, then by the State
Department, and finally by the Defense Department. When he called the
United
States a "strategic ally," maybe it was a taunt as much as it was reality.
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