HistoricalMullet: Chalabi Bites the Hand that Feeds Him

Chalabi shows his colors as soon as he’s on the ground in Iraq undermining US policy that put him on the ground there with forign cache in the first place. (Ed. 103/2/2023)

Been a week or so, personal update to follow but today’s political vent.

Chalabi was the Pentagon’s hand-picked, “leader in the wings” for Iraq. He was not recommended by the State Department, nor the CIA as either reliable or representative of the Iraqi people (he’s been living in exile for many decades in Europe).

Near the end of the war, he was flown into Iraq with several hundred Iraqi National Congress militiamen, trained by US soldiers so that they could participate in the final battles. Baghdad fell too quickly and that group just became a US taxpayer funded security force for Chalabi.

When the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council was formed Chalabi gained an appointment due to his Pentagon backing. This month he’s in the rotating Presidency spot of the Council, and he’s backstabbing the folks who put him there by running to the Europeans (France/Germany) and the UN to get them to push for a speeded-up transition of power fully to the Iraqi’s, with himself as a candidate recipient naturally. He’s taken the millions of US taxpayer dollars provided to the INC set up a slick, US-style campaign headquarters, and has already begun political campaigning in Iraq.

Now my positions on Iraq are well known, but just to be clear, we cannot transition power to Iraq before they are ready for it, and certainly not to someone like Chalabi. Nor can we leave Iraq, now that we’re in there, until the job of stabilizing and instituting democratic institutions firmly (separation of police and courts, a free press, the rule of law, etc..)

Chalabi is another example of the Pentagon, underneath Rumsfield, forraying into matters of international policy, a place it has no business being as a military institution; and getting it wrong. North Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Russia, China, Old Europe, New Europe…these are all countries and regions where the Pentagon has tried to exert a foreign policy counter to the actions of the State Department, and it needs to stop. Fortunately for us Chalabi did not get the power the Pentagon wanted for him and after this stunt will probably be distanced from US support. He still may end up ruling Iraq because in the formative stages of this country, his hundreds of millions of US taxpayer money can go a long way to buying himself a constituency.

Tim C.