Home About Chat Users Issues Party Candidates Polling Firms Media News Polls Calendar Key Races United States President Senate House Governors International

New User Account
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource." 
Email: Password:

  Commentary: Chalabi's betrayal
NEWS DETAILS
Parent(s) Issue 
ContributorArmyDem 
Last EditedArmyDem  May 20, 2004 08:29pm
Logged 0
CategoryCommentary
MediaNews Service - United Press International
News DateThursday, May 20, 2004 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionBy Arnaud de Borchgrave
UPI Editor at Large
Published 5/20/2004 5:34 PM

WASHINGTON, May 20 (UPI) -- This time Ahmad Chalabi's detractors may have outsmarted themselves. By raiding his Baghdad compound and seizing files and computers, U.S. occupation authorities have conferred on Chalabi the credentials of an anti-American leader. How could he still be considered an American stooge if L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, authorized a joint U.S.-Iraqi swoop on his house?

Chalabi, complaining bitterly about his former American friends, immediately played the anti-U.S. card like a true Middle Eastern professional. Americans, he told reporters, have outworn their welcome in Iraq, and they should let Iraqis run their own affairs and leave. Before the raid on his family and his Iraqi National Congress, or INC, party headquarters, Iraqis regarded him as the American puppet he once was. Now he is properly credentialed as a pol who has stood his ground against the increasingly unpopular occupier.

The chubby, portly Shiite scion of an old Iraqi political family lost favor with his American neocon backers when he betrayed a promise he had made about Israel before being flown back by the Pentagon -- with some 700 U.S.-trained militia -- to the Iraq he had left as a teenager over 40 years ago. Sponsored by Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Chalabi was put on the U.S. payroll to the tune of $340,000 a month. He cemented his alliance with the neocon establishment by pledging to recognize and sign a peace treaty with Israel when he made it to the top of the emerging post-Saddam Hussein political establishment.
Share
ArticleRead Full Article

NEWS
Date Category Headline Article Contributor

DISCUSSION