Free Republic

"In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."  U.S. government "Summary of Evidence" for an Iraqi member of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay, CubaFOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or...

(Ayad) Allawi, the son of a Shiite businessman, joined the nationalist Baath party when he was a medical student, but in the 1970s, became an opponent of Saddam, who had already begun using brutal methods to steer the country. Today, 11 years after Saddam’s fall, violence, corruption and abuses of power still dominate daily life in Baghdad. Allawi blames Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for this chaos. […] “I have nothing against the Iranian leadership. In fact, I accommodated it often enough during my time as premier. But I am no proponent of a theocracy. I am a secularist. I wanted...

Iraq’s former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Sunday that President Obama was wrong when he claimed the United States left Iraq as a stable and democratic country. Appearing on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Allawi said, "It’s neither stable nor democratic, frankly speaking. The terrorists are hitting again very severely. Al Qaeda is fully operational now in Iraq" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

A journalist for Al-Jazeera has been arrested on suspicion of being an agent of the Palestinian terror group Hamas. The journalist, Samer Allawi, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Afghanistan, is a Palestinian. He was apprehended by Israeli authorities as he attempted to leave the West Bank. Meantime, Republican Rep. Ron Paul, a presidential candidate who has appeared on Al-Jazeera, has picked up the support of another foreign propaganda channel. In addition to getting major sympathetic coverage from Russia Today, which is funded by Moscow, the Texas congressman is getting rave reviews from Press TV, the channel funded by the Iranian regime....

LONDON — Iyad Allawi, who won the most votes in Iraq's elections, threatened to quit a power-sharing government in an interview with Britain's Times newspaper on Tuesday. "Power-sharing is not happening," Allawi said. "It is not set to work in a meaningful way... If it does not change, I will not participate." Despite being lauded by international leaders including US President Barack Obama, Iraq's power-sharing pact has looked fragile ever since it was agreed last month after an eight-month impasse. Despite his Iraqiya block narrowly winning elections in March, Allawi has seen religious parties coalesce to form the biggest grouping...

Baghdad leaders reveal that coup plot duped MI6 Julie Flint explains how rumours of Saddam's overthrow caused British intelligence to miss vital information about Iraq's weapons programme British intelligence took its eyes off Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes because it had been duped into believing a military coup would leave Sunni Muslims in power in Iraq. Sources in the country say what they missed was a push to convert chemical and biological organisms into dry agents that could be hidden until pressure on the regime was lifted. 'From the second half of 2000, the focus of the British was not on...

In a SPIEGEL interview, Ayad Allawi, Iraq's former and possibly future prime minister, discusses the withdrawal of US troops, the power struggle in Baghdad and the "very high possibility" of a new war in the Middle East. Three bodyguards are sitting in front of his hotel suite in Kuwait, their guns bulging from beneath their suits. It's Ramadan and the men are fasting. But Ayad Allawi isn't, and he asks for an espresso. Allawi doesn't even create the impression that he lives according to religious rites. And that's also one reason why, nearly six months after the Iraqi election, he...

CAIRO — The surprisingly strong election showing by a secular, nationalist coalition in Iraq has provided a sudden opening for the mostly Sunni Arab world to curtail Iranian influence in Iraq, something that has been a source of serious alarm for the United States and its Arab allies since 2003.

Pending decisions on motions for re-counts yet to be filed by current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s (photo above) al-Iraqiya party has won a two-seat-margin plurality in the past week’s parliamentary elections. Assuming the election results do not change, Allawi must increase his control from 89 to 163 seats in order to again become Prime Minister. He will have to negotiate both with the Kurds, who won 43 positions, and with Moqtada al-Sadr’s Iraqi National Alliance, which controls 70. Yesterday’s New York Times published an analysis of the election results, interestingly broken down mostly along...

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi reached out to his rivals to form a governing coalition Saturday, staking his claim as the top vote-getter in Iraq's elections and saying he hoped to build strong relations with neighboring countries. Allawi's secular Iraqiya bloc edged out chief rival Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by just two seats in the March 7 vote for a 325-member parliament. The razor-thin victory meant Allawi's road to regaining the premiership is anything but guaranteed, and a lengthy period of political negotiations -- possibly punctuated with violence -- likely lies ahead. Regardless of the outcome, the...

BAGHDAD (AP) -- A jubilant Ayad Allawi claimed victory for his secular, anti-Iranian coalition as final parliamentary returns Friday showed him edging out the bloc of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who angrily vowed to fight the results. The results, if they stand, will give Allawi the first opportunity to form a parliamentary majority and Iraq's next government. But they do not automatically mean that he will become prime minister, and the narrow margin sets the stage for months of political wrangling. "On this occasion, I'd like to congratulate the Iraqi people and extend the hand of friendship to all neighboring...

Before Iraq's first election in January 2005, the Bush administration debated whether to support any particular candidate. The Central Intelligence Agency wanted to funnel $20 million to its longtime favorite Ayad Allawi, who was then serving as prime minister in a U.S.-appointed government. But Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's top foreign policy adviser, argued that the U.S. should create a level playing-field and let the chips fall where they may. Ms. Rice won the day. And so did the United Iraqi Alliance, an alliance of Shiite parties led first by Ibrahim Jaafari and, after subsequent elections that year, by Nouri al-Maliki,...

Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is orchestrating a campaign of persecution against political rivals "even worse" than Saddam Hussein's reign of terror, his predecessor has claimed. US reviews security firms after 11 Iraqis die Audio: Former Iraqi leader warns of paralysis In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Ayad Allawi claimed agents of Mr Maliki's Dawa Party were tightening their control of Iraq to emulate the creeping coup tactics used by the deposed Ba'ath Party to take over in the 1960s. Ayad Allawi calls for his successor, Nouri al-Maliki, to be replaced. He claimed that Mr Maliki commands his own...

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) — A powerhouse Republican lobbying firm with close ties to the White House has begun a public campaign to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, CNN has confirmed. .................. A senior Bush administration official told CNN the White House is aware of the lobbying campaign by Barbour Griffith & Rogers because the firm is "blasting e-mails all over town" criticizing al-Maliki and promoting the firm's client, former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as an alternative to the current Iraqi leader. ................ The lobbying firm boasts the services of two onetime foreign policy hands...

The former Iraqi prime minister speaks out on how he hired a well-connected Washington lobbying firm to help pave his attempt to oust the current government. Who’s footing the bill? Aug. 29, 2007 - The powerhouse Washington lobbying firm hired by former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi is talking to the Justice Department about how to amend its foreign-agent filings after department lawyers questioned whether the firm had adequately disclosed who was paying the firm’s tab. The talks came as Allawi told NEWSWEEK that two Iraqi supporters of his were footing the $300,000 bill for the contract he recently signed...

Former interim Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi, who is trying to put together a new coalition to replace the current Baghdad government headed by Nouri al-Maliki, said yesterday that a powerful Washington lobbying firm is working on his behalf, funded by an Iraqi whom he cannot identify. Allawi confirmed on CNN's "Late Edition" yesterday that Barbour Griffith & Rogers had been hired "to help us advocate our views, the views of the nationalistic Iraqis, the nonsectarian Iraqis." Allawi said reports that Barbour Griffith is to receive $300,000 over six months are accurate, "but that these figures are really much less...

Next month, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will report to Congress on the situation in my country. I expect that the testimony of these two good men will be qualified and nuanced, as politics requires. I also expect that their assessment will not capture the totality of the tragedy -- that more than four years after its liberation from Saddam Hussein, Iraq is a failing state, not providing the most basic security and services to its people and contributing to an expanding crisis in the Middle East. Let me be clear. Responsibility...

Ali Allawi's memoir The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace certainly deserves the praise and attention it has been getting (even from writers like Maureen Dowd, so eager to score cheap points against the Bush administration that—even while rebuking others for having insufficient grasp of Iraqi reality—she confused the author with his cousin Iyad Allawi and called him a "puppet" into the bargain). The book is written with a very strong combination of heart and mind by someone with an enviable command of English who both knows and cares a good deal about Iraq. He does not...

NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country — a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators." "The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press. Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense...

Reading this engaging book is like watching a trapeze act. The writer Ali A Allawi is an American-educated Iraqi politician who served as Defense and Finance minister in post-liberation governments in Baghdad. Excluded from the new Cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Allawi took time to write about the tumultuous experiences of the past four years. Despite the subtitle of the book, Allawi does not argue a case for the claim that the US-led coalition and its allies, backed by the overwhelming majority of the people of Iraq, have already lost the peace. Allawi shows that the war achieved all...