Posted on 04/24/2004 1:19:49 PM PDT by Arkinsaw
WASHINGTON, April 24. — The USA and the top UN envoy to Iraq have decided to exclude the majority of politicians the US-led coalition relied on over the past year when they select an Iraqi government to assume power on 30 June, officials said. The latest shift in policy comes as the US-led coalition faces some contentious and long-standing issues ahead of the power transfer, the Washington Post reported quoting US and UN officials.
At the top of the list of those likely to be jettisoned was Mr Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician who for years was a favourite of the Pentagon and the office of US Vice-President Mr Richard Cheney.
Mr Chalabi has increasingly alienated the Bush administration in recent months. He generated anger in Washington yesterday when he said a new US plan to allow some former officials of the Baath Party and military to return to office was the equivalent of returning Nazis to power.
In a nationwide address yesterday, US administrator Mr Paul Bremer said complaints that the programme was “unevenly and unjustly” administered were “legitimate”.
In another development, The US-led coalition has approved $500 million in reconstruction spending for seven Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah, a US official said in Ramadi today.
So, I wouldn't read too much into it........SPIN!!!!!
"Sorry about your klymer kids and the palaces, Saddam, but we didn't find any WMDs and these people deserve you. Let's kiss and make up?"
I believe we SHOULD DESTROY Fallujah BEFORE we rebuild it.
Turns out my friend was right. Not only was Chalabi responsible for most of the false intelligence we received about WMD prior to the war, he has proved to be angling from Day One to put himself into top leadership and is looking out for his own political interests, not what is best for Iraq. If you look at his recent positions, he is anything but a friend to us, and is trying to play both sides of the fence to advance himself.
Can't believe it, but the State Department was right about the guy.
Well, well, a little good news indeed
Could it be this?
Mr Hankes-Drielsma, a close associate of the controversial Iraqi finance minister Ahmed Chalabi, has played a pivotal role in bringing the scandal to light by challenging the United Nations with paperwork discovered in Baghdad files.
The finance minister and the Oil for Food scandal. Think perhaps he's a sneaky guy?
I guess Dickie Perle must be all broken up about it.
It was neocon Perle who was overseer of the "Chalabi Intelligence Network", for which the US paid Chalabi and his INC 92 Million US dollars (and Perle got how much?).
The INC facilitated the effort to feed bogus intelligence to the Pentagon and the CIA.
After the US invaded Iraq, our military could not even find the alleged agent network Chalabi said he ran.
Chalabi's explanation?.." They are in hiding"...
What a crock. "Uriah Heep" Chalabi was running the classic "Intelligence for sale" scam. Every con artist and their cousin came crawling out of the woodwork to cash in. Perle was the author of it.
Yeah, and now it's time for the admin to cut off the $300,000 per month we are still paying Chalabi.
The following kinda helps a little (snicker). Notice that Perle helped Democrat Schwartz of Loral who was Clinton's biggest donor. It must be a real *itch for Perle to figure out which hat he should be wearing---his neocon headgear gets limited use.
Report Finds No Violations at Pentagon by Adviser
By STEPHEN LABATON / November 15, 2003
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - The Pentagon's inspector general concluded this week that Richard N. Perle violated no ethics laws or rules when he was leading an influential Pentagon advisory board while at the same timerepresenting two companies in their dealings with the government.
But Mr. Perle has become the focus of an inquiry being conducted by Hollinger International, the media conglomerate, where he serves as a director. That inquiry is examining several transactions, including $2.5 million in payments made by the company to Trireme Partners, a venture capital company in which Mr. Perle is a managing partner. The inquiry is being led by Richard C. Breeden, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The inspector general's conclusions were in a heavily excised report dated Nov. 10 that was released on Friday by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who requested the inquiry after reports about Mr. Perle's business dealings.
Those reports led Mr. Perle to step down last March as chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. The panel is a group of influential advisers that meets regularly with the defense secretary and other top officials, has access to classified information and plays an important role in shaping military policy. *Mr. Perle remains a member of the board.
"We have completed our inquiry regarding the conduct of Mr. Perle and did not substantiate allegations of misconduct," Joseph E. Schmirtz, the inspector general, wrote in a letter to Mr. Conyers that accompanied the report.
The report confirmed many of the underlying facts of the news reports and found that Mr. Perle's business dealings did not violate the ethics rules. It concluded that Mr. Perle "arguably represented" two companies in matters "pending in the department or agency of the government in which such employee is serving" and therefore in possible violation of two federal laws.
But the report said that because Mr. Perle was classified as a "special government employee" the two provisions would be violated only if he served in government for more than 60 days during the year. His job entailed only about eight days of service annually, according to the report. While he led the board, Mr. Perle advised the American satellite maker, Loral Space and Communications, as it faced government accusations that it improperly transferred rocket technology to China. He contacted the senior official at the State Department considering the Loral matter.
Mr. Perle has said he contacted the official, an assistant secretary, Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr., to inquire about the status of license requests by Loral to deliver the satellites that had been made for China.
In another case, Mr. Perle was retained by the telecommunications company Global Crossing to help the company overcome resistance by the Defense Department to its proposed sale to a joint venture of Hutchison Whampoa, controlled by the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, and Singapore Technologies Telemedia, a phone company controlled by the government of Singapore.
In that case, Mr. Perle and his lawyers had prepared to file an affidavit in the Global Crossing bankruptcy proceeding that said he was uniquely qualified to advise the company on the matter because of his job as head of the Defense Policy Board. But after a reporter raised questions about whether he was using his job at the policy board for the benefit of a client, Mr. Perle and his lawyers revised the affidavit.
The inspector general's report said that "on its face, the affidavit would appear to violate D.O.D. ethics regulations that prohibit the use of official position for personal gain." "However, testimony from multiple witnesses corroborated Mr. Perle's assertion that he objected to the language at issue and signed a second version of the affidavit only after being incorrectly assured that the language referring to his D.P.B.A.C. position had been removed," the report said. "Accordingly, we considered his act, while careless, an unintentional oversight."
--------------------------------
*Perle is no longer a member of the defense board.
I knew King Hussein since 1970 and until his death; I do not recall the number of interviews I had with him, or the number of our private meetings in Amman and London, which he used to frequently visit. I asked him about Ahmad Chalabi once, so he described him in one word, adding that he did not wish to talk about him.
King Hussein forgave people that arranged coups against him, he forgave others who tried to kill him, but he died without forgiving Ahmad Chalabi for the issue of the bankruptcy of Petra Bank, which was about to cause the collapse of the Jordanian economy. The story is known; in 1989, the Jordanian forces stormed into Petra Bank, which was established in 1978, and Ahmad Chalabi ran away to Syria, and then to Europe, after being accused of stealing and wasting $300 million. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison, which is a sentence still applicable. Prior to that, Ahmad Chalabi was involved in a bank issue in UAE, and in the bankruptcy of Bank of Beirut. In London, Iraqis also repeat the stories of activities undertaken by him and one of his cousins, but I could not confirm this information.
King Abdullah II inherited his father's attitude vis-à-vis Mr. Chalabi. Instead of him trying to please the new king, and searching for a way to settle the matter, Mr. Chalabi started threatening, and creating stories about King Hussein that could not have been correct, especially in the aspects I followed back then.
Mr. Chalabi told the Washington Post that he met King Hussein four times after he left Jordan, and that the King suggested pardoning him but that he refused, because he did not believe he committed any error. He also claimed that King Hussein was about to cancel his prison sentence, but he died before doing so; he added that he had good relations with Queen Nour.
The newspaper asked people close to Queen Nour, who denied any relation between her and Chalabi. Concerning King Hussein, I talked to him about Ahmad Chalabi, and he criticized him on a day that I fully remember; I met with the king in his palace in Amman, and he was offended by Al-Hayat's articles about "trotting" towards peace with Israel. On that day, we watched a live press conference on CNN from Sharm El Sheikh, for President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After my question and his brief answer, I did not feel the King was ready to forgive Ahmad Chalabi.
But Mr. Chalabi was not content with this; he lost all chances of being forgiven when his assistant repeated that he was negotiating with the Jordanian government on paying millions of dollars in compensation for his losses in Petra Bank. When the newspaper asked him about this subject, he claimed he was very angry for the leak of this information, although it was obvious that he, or his assistant, leaked this false information. I had asked the closest assistants of King Abdullah about this issue and they made fun of the entire news.
I feel that Mr. Chalabi committed two errors: the first was what he did in Petra Bank and then his attempt to get out of the plight through threats.
The Iraqi National Congress (INC), whose members entered Baghdad along with American soldiers, gathered tons of documents about the Iraqi intelligence and the various ministries. Mr. Chalabi said that he had information exposing relationships that Arab and foreign leaders, namely Americans, had with Saddam Hussein's regime. Americans have a famous proverb: "Act and shut up."
The story that Ahmad Chalabi wishes to convince the world of is that King Hussein was in need of Iraqi oil and of protecting economic relations with Saddam Hussein's regime. The Iraqi President could have thus pressured the Jordanian King to bring down an enemy that he might have considered to be dangerous.
Tamara, Ahmad Chalabi's daughter, wrote an article of the same meaning in the Wall Street Journal; she said that Saddam Hussein asked King Abdullah to attack Chalabi, because this latter contributed to the efforts, which culminated in imposing financial sanctions on Iraq.
It was supposed that, after King Hussein died without forgiving Ahmad Chalabi, this latter would try to resume the effort with King Abdullah, in order to completely close the subject. But the nature of Mr. Chalabi prevailed him; instead of asking for the forgiveness of the new King, he leaked information that king Abdullah was a friend of Udai Saddam Hussein, and that he visited him in Baghdad and had business relations with him.
King Abdullah complained to President George Bush about Mr. Chalabi, and he showed him his report. The result was that the American President isolated himself from the INC leader, who had no supporters left except Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and the Israeli gang of neo-conservatives.
The relations with Jordan deteriorated to the extent that Jordan's ambassador to Washington, Karim Kawar, talked about the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, saying: we have reasons to believe that he is involved in the accident. We are waiting for the results of the investigations but our intelligence services tell us that he might be involved.
Could Mr. Chalabi save his personal situation inside and outside Iraq? He could act in accordance with the intelligence that we all see in him, but he does not seem to be able to acknowledge his mistakes, or show enough modesty to ask for solutions.
While I do not have a preconceived stance against Mr. Chalabi, I think there are political figures in Iraq that are better than him and who do not need the Americans and their support. And if the choice were between him and King Abdullah, no one would choose him. Perhaps there is still a chance for Mr. Chalabi to ask for the assistance of advisors who are familiar with Iraq, and who could prevent him from repeating his mistakes, or committing new ones.
Thanks. Pinging interested parties to post 35.
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