http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41871-2004May20.html Chalabi's House Raided by U.S. Troops By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, May 20, 2004; 10:00 AM BAGHDAD, May 20--U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police on Thursday raided the home of Ahmad Chalabi, a Governing Council member who was once the Pentagon's pick to run post-war Iraq, and two office buildings used by his Iraqi National Congress. Released MAY 19, 2004 U.S. troops detained three guards and seized computers, dozens of rifles, and files from the offices of the INC, a coalition of parties that opposed Saddam Hussein from exile. INC officials said about 100 U.S. soldiers arrived in the neighborhood before the raids began, and that Iraqi police carried out much of the search at the direction of an American in civilian clothes whom they identified as an official with Central Intelligence Agency. Boot prints marked several doors kicked down in the raids, which included a top-to-bottom search of the INC's intelligence offices that Washington once turned to for help in searching for former top Hussein officials and weapons of mass destruction. The Defense Intelligence Agency decided earlier this month to end a $340,000 monthly payment to the INC's intelligence arm, the source for much of the pre-war information on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction that were President Bush's rationale for toppling Hussein. The raids appeared to complete Chalabi's remarkable fall from grace in Washington over the last difficult year of U.S. occupation in Iraq. There was no immediate explanation from U.S. officials here for the reason behind the morning searches. But INC officials said the raids were U.S. retribution against Chalabi for his increasingly strident criticism of the American management of post-war Iraq. "This is a political conspiracy and political pressure," said Haider Musawi, an INC official who spoke with reporters at the party's headquarters in a lavish home once occupied by Hussein's half-brother. "We have been talking about full sovereignty for the Iraqi people. We have been talking about a corruption investigation into the U.N. programs. We knew that they were preparing something against us for some time." Chalabi, a wealthy businessman who returned to Iraq after decades of exile in London, won favor among Pentagon officials before the war for his ardent opposition to Hussein and as a generous source of information on Iraq's weapons programs. He is also a moderate Shiite Muslim, making him a potentially important bridge to Iraq's majority religious community. But it became clear soon after the fall of Baghdad that Chalabi enjoyed little support inside Iraq, and much of his pre-war intelligence has turned out to be wrong or "intentionally misleading," according to a recent U.S. assessment.. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction has become a political liability for Bush during an election year, and Chalabi's relationship with his former patrons at the Pentagon has soured accordingly. In turn, Chalabi, who is one of 25 members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, has emerged as among the most outspoken mainstream critics of U.S. policy in Iraq. Over the past few months, he has criticized the Bush administration for not moving quickly enough toward ending the occupation and granting full political powers to an Iraqi government. U.S. officials intend to hand over limited authority to an interim Iraqi government next month. More recently, Chalabi has blamed U.S. military officials for allowing members of Hussein's Baath Party to remerge as a local security force in the restive city of Fallujah west of Baghdad. Chalabi condemned U.S. security policy as a failure after the assassination earlier this week of Izzedin Salim, the governing council president this month who was killed in a suicide car-bomb while waiting to enter the U.S. compound. He has also been feuding with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, over who should manage an investigation into corruption inside the Hussein-era U.N. oil-for-food program. Chalabi and the rest of the Governing Council want to oversee the inquiry, and had asked the U.S. firm KPMG to conduct the audit. Bremer refused to release the money, however, and has approved the hiring of Ernst & Young to conduct the $20 million investigation. INC officials said U.S. troops and Iraqi police arrived in the elite Mansour neighborhood, the location of Chalabi's house and the INC offices, around 6 a.m. A few hours later, the officials said, soldiers and police arrived at Chalabi's home and demanded to be let inside. The officers said they were pursing several "suspects," INC officials recounted, but would not disclose the reason or produce an arrest warrant when asked. Musawi said Chalabi "conducted negotiations" from inside his home, an INC official said, and eventually allowed one Iraqi police officer to enter and search the premises for the suspects. No one was found. The police and soldiers moved next to the INC offices, housed in an ornate Chinese-style mansion once the perk of whoever headed Hussein's intelligence agency. Several guards on duty said as many as 100 U.S. soldiers arrived, and stood guard as six Iraqi police officers entered with an American dressed in civilian clothes and body armor. One of the guards said the American directed the Iraqi police, who they said kicked down doors and smashed a picture of Chalabi. A damaged frame could be seen in one of the ransacked offices. Haider Ridha Mohammed, a guard on duty at the time, said he asked t he police officer why he had tossed the framed photograph on the ground. Mohammed said the officer responded, "He's gone now, Ahmad Chalabi is finished." A senior Iraqi police official familiar with the raid denied that the officers damaged the photographs. Musawi said eight or nine computers had been taken, along with files from several individual offices. He said the three guards detained by U.S. troops were the latest INC officials picked up by U.S. forces. Two others have been arrested in the past month, he said, although he did not name them. One of them may be, Sabah Nouri, whom Chalabi picked to become the top anti-corruption official in the new Iraqi Ministry of Finance. Chalabi heads the Governing Council's finance committee, and has enormous clout over its staffing and operation. Nouri, a German national, is now being held in a maximum-security prison. He faces 17 charges related to corruption, according to a U.S. official familiar with the case. U.S. soldiers also seized at least 36 rifles from the headquarters, at least some of them licensed, according to INC officials. "They took the weapons three days after the president's assassination - what kind of a message does that send?" Musawi said. "They have been waging a smear campaign against Chalabi and the INC for some time. It is clear this is a political game."
This can only add to uncertainty over the June 30th handover. It is clear, however, that we need to stem the tide of corruption before it can take hold politically.
Chalabi's response... Chalabi Furious at U.S. Over Raid on Baghdad Office 34 minutes ago BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi launched a bitter attack on his former U.S. mentors and on Iraq's U.S.-appointed police commander after U.S. troops and police raided his home and offices on Thursday. It was time U.S. occupying troops left Iraq, said Chalabi, who lost U.S. funding for his political party earlier this week. "They invaded the home of a Governing Council member a few days after the president of the Governing Council was blown up by terrorist actions at an American checkpoint," a clearly livid Chalabi told a hastily arranged news conference. Brandishing a framed picture on which the glass was shattered, he accused troops and police of rousing him from his bed, ransacking his office, removing documents and a valuable copy of the Koran and "vandalizing" his belongings. A wealthy businessman who lived in exile in the West during Saddam Hussein's rule, Chalabi was once seen in the Pentagon as a future leader of Iraq, despite his lack of popular support. But he has become deeply critical of U.S. strategy, accusing U.S. governor Paul Bremer of allowing former senior members of Saddam's Baath party to return to positions of power, including in the police and interior ministry structures. "The Baathists are coming here to attack us under American supervision," he said. He said U.S. officials disliked his opposition to Baathists, his efforts to investigate kickbacks paid by foreigners to Saddam under the U.N. oil-for-food program and his demands for full Iraqi control over the armed forces after a U.S. handover of limited sovereignty, planned for June 30. "Let my people go. Let my people be free. It is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs," Chalabi said. "If the (U.S. occupation authority) CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack on my home you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."
Just one more example of the Bush Administration's unbelievable incompetence, that has squandered this country's blood and treasure. Even if you agreed with the Administration's goals you have to be appalled at their execution. The fact that almost 50% of the population still supports Bush is mind boggling.
To refresh some memories, Chalabi and his organization were among the primary, if not the primary sources of 'information' on Iraq gathered by the intelligence organization set up by the White House when it was not satisfied that the CIA etc. were getting the dirt on Iraq. Chalabi was also the man Cheney et al put forward to be the Iraqi figurehead for the aspirant provisional government, which was opposed by the State Dept. DUring the early days of the invasion he was also marked out to play the DeGaul role; the returning liberator, but an embarrassed Chalabi and US administration were stunned by the completely undewhelming support Chalabi received on his return march, and the idea was quickly scrapped and little was said about it's failure, other than the inital videotaped processions through parts of Iraq, waiting in vain for a rising of local support.
The original plan by the Rummy-Wolfy-Feith-Perle-Abrams crew, I kid you not, was to have Chalabi, an exile who hadn't lived in Iraq in like 30 years, with no support or power base in Iraq as well as a reputed swindler who has been convicted and is wanted in Jordan I think, assume the reins to the loving approval joyous, flower bearing Iraqis, and establish a pro-Israeli, pro-US, solvent & self supporting democracy. Unfathomable.
The thieves are squabbling among themselves. Maybe the plan is to blame in all on Chalabi. Claim that not only incurious George, but Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld etc. were all fooled by Chalabi. Only thing is the CIA and State Department and the trial court in Jordan that convicted him of bank fraud have long know that Chalabi was a charlatan. Interestingly Chalabi is trying to appeal to the Iraq super majority by claiming that the Bremer and the US have turned on him because he wants the US out of Iraq!!! With new polls showing 90% 0f Arab Iraqis wanting the Americans out of Iraq, the Iraqi-American Chalabi better use his US passport and high tail it back to the US or London, where he lived for many years.
Hey, Sam, did you see the incredible thing where they chose one of Chalabi's relatives, who is a partner in a law firm with offices in NYC and Israel to try Sadam? Incredibly, Douglas ? Feith, a lawyer, Wolfowitz's right hand boy, is on leave from the same law firm. It is too much. I guess you call it double or tripple dipping or something. Not to mention that it just looks so bad.
If the Bush Administration was fooled by Chalabi, then they are the true fools, and must be ousted in November.
I was listening to a report on NPR this morning saying that Chalabi wanted Iraq to take control of all the oil revenues, and wanted to have the ultimate say over whether American troops stayed or went after June 30th. A spokesman for Chalabi claimed that was why the U.S. carried out the raid. I think Chalabi is a corrupt swindler, but I do wonder why Iraqis won't have control over their own oil revenue if they are truly to be a sovereign state. Why won't they have control over whether occupying troops can stay there if they are truly to be a sovereign state. The very definition of sovereignty seemingly precludes the idea of being partially in control of their own country.
Additionally Greenstock stated the other day why the administration is so confident we won't be asked to leave Iraq... ...if they ask us to take our troops home, the money we have voted to rebuild Iraq following our invasion will also be pulled.
I don't even know if they'd object. Several would feel it's an entitlement, and overlook the fact that much of th money is simply rebuilding things we destroyed. Either way, Greenstock didn't mention it like it was a secret, more like it was a known fact.
I think Chalabi is a corrupt swindler, but I do wonder why Iraqis won't have control over their own oil revenue if they are truly to be a sovereign state. Franchiseblade, get with the program. They will not only be a "truly overiegn stete," but they will be a democracy, too. Well much has been made of the fact that Chalabi has all the documents showing where all the skeletons are buried. This probably includes goodies like Cheney and Halliburton's illegal dealings with Sadam during the embargo. Incredibile. The Bush Administration is like someone trying to plug a hundred holes in the dike at the same time. Sooner or later even the dittoheads might start wondering about their competenece and honesty..
Very little of the money for Iraq has been spent on rebuilding. Most of it has gone for security mercenaries and the costs of building the CPA bureaucracy according to the last reports I saw in the Washington Post, and towards building the worlds largest embassy, the US embassy in Baghdad.
To follow up on what Woof said. I saw a figure the other day that said of the 18.5B allotted Iraq for reconstruction, only about 1.3 had been released.
Via Josh... ______ It's an obvious question really, but worth asking, worth considering: How long do we think the administration, the CPA, the UN and whoever else now has a finger in the pie will wait to announce what government, even what sort of government Advertisement LISA Global Strategies Summit Companies in all industries are facing significant multilingual content management challenges. Enterprise content has grown out of control. Optimize your global management now! Join the experts and thought leaders at the LISA Global Strategies Summit from June 21-24, 2004 in San Francisco. we'll be handing 'sovereignty' over to at the end of June? What's the absolute latest you can imagine? A month? A week? Could it be like one of Bill Clinton's state of the union addresses where they're fiddling with the small print until a couple hours before showtime? I'd be surprised if they came up with a plan by the end of this month and I cannot imagine they'd leave it until less than a week before June 30th. But just step back and look at how crazy this is: we've run Iraq for more than a year, spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the whole effort, lost many of our own sons and daughters as well as many Iraqis. And here you have what is arguably the big issue: who you hand the place off to and how you hand it off to them. And it's left to the last minute, with the powers that be having to ditch almost everything that has come up until this point and start from scratch. The market in examples for how badly the Bush team has bungled this situation is admittedly glutted. But even if they're now going for a dime a dozen this is really one to marvel at. Now, another related point: the increasing velocity and ferocity of war-hawks trying to shift the blame for their own goofs by inventing a new stab-in-the-back theory (nicely patterned on the original one from Weimar Germany) to cushion their consciences from the brunt of recognizing the dire pass to which their own foolishness and reckless zeal have brought their country. The chief example I've seen -- though there must be many others -- is John Podhoretz's column in The New York Post from last Friday, May 14th. The column is a string of accusations. The first is against The New York Times for, according to Podhoretz, blaming the United States, rather than his murderers, for Nick Berg's death. "The Times," writes Podhoretz, in concluding this section of his piece, "is leading the mainstream media in turning the United States into the bad guys in Iraq." Podhoretz's evidence is an article in the Times which reports the Berg family's claims that the Bush administration somehow bears some of the blame for their son's death. Now, just as Berg's death shouldn't have been cynically exploited by Bush partisans, what his family says shouldn't be exploited in the other direction. But simply reporting what the family says in a news article hardly seems to merit anything Podhoretz says. What he wants is a black-out on anything the family says -- and that in the context of the saturation coverage of the murder itself -- because it is politically off-message. Then there's the Time magazine cover with an Abu Ghraib image which reads "Iraq: How Did It Come to This?" After blowing some smoke about the war's aim of "liberat[ing] 25 million people and rout[ing] Islamic extremists, terrorists and those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans" Podhoretz calls the Time cover "a vile and grotesque slander against every American in uniform in Iraq." At length, the column concludes with these four grafs ... So let's be clear what's going on here. As we speak, 138,000 Americans are serving under dangerous conditions in Iraq. And our forces in Karbala are fighting against the goons and thugs of Muqtada al-Sadr with some success. They're risking their lives for freedom and honor and duty and love of country. And conventional liberal opinion wants them to lose. Conventional liberal opinion believes that the Abu Ghraib photos are the true meaning of the war, and that Nick Berg is just another victim of callous U.S. policy. Conventional liberal opinion is actively seeking the humiliation and defeat of the United States in Iraq. Let's be a little more clear about what's going on here. Having led the country perilously close to humiliation and defeat, the architects of the war want to shift the blame for what's happened to their opponents who either said the whole thing was a mistake in the first place or criticized the incompetence of its execution as it unfolded. They take the blame, the moral accountability, by 'wishing' for a bad result. That at least is Podhoretz's reasoning. If ever there was an example of moral up-is-downism, this is it. And claiming that their political opponents -- liberal, in Podhoretz's usage here, is just a catch-all -- want defeat and humiliation for their country is certainly the most gutterish sort of slander there is. There's something almost uncomfortable about watching the mix of desperation, panicked zeal and projection evidenced in Podhoretz's column. It's like the p*rnography of watching someone beg for his life or shift the blame onto someone else when they've been caught in the act -- with the added twist of spasms of aggression mixed in. But on a broader level, it's in character. Not for Podhoretz -- this isn't at all directed at him as a person -- but for the movement, the crew, he's part of and is trying to defend. How'd we get into this? After 50 years of pretty consistently prudential foreign policy, managed mostly on a consensus of bipartisan agreement (yes, there are exceptions, but by and large, true), they decided to bet the national ranch on an idea. Actually it was a series of ideas, wrapped together in an odd tangle that could look like an odd jumble when viewed from outside. The key, however, was betting the national ranch on steep odds. Only, they weren't confident the country would get behind such a riverboat gamble. So they lied about what they were doing. They didn't trust the people -- which might be an epitaph we should return to. Now, what do we expect of people who make reckless gambles with other people's money? Of people who can't discipline themselves enough to distinguish between their hopes and reality? What do you expect of that ne'er-do-well relative who's always hitting you up for a loan because he's come up with a sure thing? Do you expect those sorts of folks to take responsibility when things go bad? Or do you expect them to blame others? Character, alas, really does count. -- Josh Marshall
Wasn't Chalabi the guest of honor (sitting next to the first lady) at the SOTU this year? My, how far we've come in four months.
