Iraq: Chalabi's home raided by the US

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Vympel
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Iraq: Chalabi's home raided by the US

Post by Vympel »

Chalabi blames Ba'athists ... hehehe

So much for the neocon Golden Boy. The Neocons are losing their fucking minds over this already- Laurie Mylroie, crackpot numero ono, already sent a mass email which condemned "today's outrageous, and totally uncalled for, raid on Ahmed Chalabi's compound".

Chalabi has been accused of spying for Iran.
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Re: Iraq: Chalabi's home raided by the US

Post by Aaron »

Vympel wrote:Chalabi blames Ba'athists ... hehehe

So much for the neocon Golden Boy. The Neocons are losing their fucking minds over this already- Laurie Mylroie, crackpot numero ono, already sent a mass email which condemned "today's outrageous, and totally uncalled for, raid on Ahmed Chalabi's compound".

Chalabi has been accused of spying for Iran.
Maybe their pissed at him for lying about the existence of WMD.
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Post by Aaron »

I noticed that despite this man's status with Washington, he has been unable to drum up support for his party in Iraq. This confirms my suspicion that the Iraqi exiles are out of touch with their own people. What made the USA think that the Iraqi people would want someone like this running their country?
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Post by Crown »

This has already been posted, I think I should lock it! Lover's Spat

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Post by Vympel »

Lover's spat is a very uninformative title- hence why I didn't know about it. As it is, I think my thread has more info in it. :)
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Post by MKSheppard »

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5024660/site/newsweek/

Updated: 5:58 p.m. ET May 20, 2004

May 20 - The raid came as a shock to many: U.S. soldiers breaking into the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi, the exile whom Pentagon hawks once saw as Iraq’s future leader. Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress promptly put its spin machine into overdrive. This was all about politics, the INC said—the souring of Chalabi’s reputation in Washington and his resistance to a United Nations-led plan for Iraqi sovereignty that would cut out the Iraq Governing Council, of which Chalabi is a member. "It's a provocative operation, designed to force Dr. Chalabi to change his political stance," fumed Chalabi aide Qaisar Wotwot.

In fact, sources close to the investigation tell NEWSWEEK that Thursday’s raid stems from a long-running probe by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq into financial corruption and criminal charges linked to the INC and its alleged efforts to profit illegally from Iraq’s reconstruction. Among the documents police were searching for relate to charges that INC officials profited from the introduction of a new currency. According to an official with the Coalition Provisional Authority, an INC-affiliated company was placed in charge of destroying the old currency, but “a lot of money was coming out again into circulation instead of being burned. Some of it had signs of partial burning.” The currency handover was supposed to be a one-to-one exchange, he said, “but we got a lot less in old money then we gave out.”

Among the felony counts already filed are theft of government property, theft of government money, misrepresentation and abuse of power, he said. Some of the other charges are connected to the INC’s seizure of government-owned homes and cars, especially through the group’s effective control of the Ministry of Finance, the CPA official said.

The CCCI is also investigating whether INC officials, including Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Habib, misused the Baath Party files they seized upon being helped into Iraq early by the U.S. military. Chalabi ultimately became head of the De-Baathification Committee, and U.S. officials believe that some Iraqis have been threatened with blackmail by being identified as Baath Party members if they declined to do the INC’s bidding, the CPA official said. “Just recently we learned of a situation where a senior official in the Ministry of Science and Technology refused to sign off on a contract brought in by the INC. He felt it was overpriced or that there was something else wrong with it. Because he refused, the minister and the De-Baathification Committee included his name on the list [of Baath Party] members, and they sent a letter saying you’re a Baathist and you’ll be eliminated.” The official also said about 1 billion dinars allocated for de-Baathification has mysteriously disappeared.

While the investigation is largely Iraqi-run, the CPA official admitted that the Iraqis until now have lacked the enforcement capacity: in fact, a warrant for Habib’s arrest was issued more than two weeks ago, he said. “But the Iraqi police were scared to go after such a high-profile target,” he told NEWSWEEK. Only U.S. troops could bring it off. As a result, the timing of the raid may have been politically motivated. CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer III is said to have grown increasingly disgusted with Chalabi’s behavior in recent months, officials said. And Bremer is keen to distance the CPA from Chalabi before the June 30 handover. “This is a wakeup call to the INC that you’re not above the law,” said one U.S. official. It may also signal the beginning of the end for Ahmad Chalabi."

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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Post by Sea Skimmer »

MSNBC's evening news said it was Iraqi police and not US troops who conducted the raid, anyone else here that?
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Post by Sarevok »

Cpl Kendall wrote:I noticed that despite this man's status with Washington, he has been unable to drum up support for his party in Iraq. This confirms my suspicion that the Iraqi exiles are out of touch with their own people. What made the USA think that the Iraqi people would want someone like this running their country?
Chalabi is a thief who stole money from Jordan. I doubt anyone would want him as a future Iraqi leader.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
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Post by MKSheppard »

http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/21412.htm

May 22, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - Jordan's King Abdullah fueled the U.S. move against Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi by providing bombshell intelligence that his group was spying for Iran, The Post has learned. An explosive dossier that the Jordanian monarch recently brought with him to White House sessions with President Bush detailed Mafia-style extortion rackets and secret information on U.S. military operations being passed to Iran, diplomats said.

That new information led to the Bush administration's decision to stop its $340,000-a-month payments to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and back an aggressive Iraqi criminal probe into his activities.

The file was compiled by Jordan's intelligence service, which has had an interest in Chalabi since the 1990s, when the Iraqi exile leader was convicted in absentia for embezzling millions of dollars.

The scandal stemmed from the collapse of the Bank of Petra, which Chalabi controlled, the diplomatic officials said.

Just months ago, Chalabi had been favored by Bush administration hard-liners as the next leader of Iraq and sat behind First Lady Laura Bush at the State of the Union Address in January.

The Pentagon airlifted Chalabi and members of the INC into Iraq the day after Saddam Hussein fell and gave them prominent roles in the new governing council, in charge of the Finance Ministry and ridding Iraqi government agencies of Saddam's Ba'ath Party.

But the U.S. already felt burned by the INC's involvement in passing on questionable pre-war intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

On Thursday, the relationship came to a bitter end as Iraqi police, backed by U.S. troops and FBI agents, raided Chalabi's palatial Baghdad home and issued arrest warrants for 15 members of the INC.

Officially, the raid was described as part of an Iraqi probe, launched by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.

Among the charges being pursued is that INC members on the government's "de-Ba'athification committee" instead ran a scheme in which they demanded payoffs from ex-Ba'ath Party members. In return, those Ba'athists were allowed to avoid arrest or to stay off lists the INC was preparing of people banned from jobs in the new Iraqi government, sources said.

Chalabi aides running the new government's Finance Ministry are also accused of ripping off $22 million from the Iraqi Treasury when Iraq issued new currency late last year, U.S. officials said.

King Abdullah's dossier provided critical confirmation of U.S intelligence gathered elsewhere that the INC was playing a double game with Ba'athists and that Chalabi and his security chief were passing sensitive information to Iran.

That was when the Bush administration decided to break all ties with Chalabi, sources said.

Chalabi accused the United States of trying to intimidate him at a time when he is speaking out against the U.S. occupation and threatening to go public with bombshell files on the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.

Yesterday, he called an emergency meeting of the Governing Council seeking to get official condemnation of the raid.
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Post by Joe »

MKSheppard wrote:snip
Yeah, Fox picked that up last night.
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Post by Vympel »

It'll be interesting to see if the neocons have the balls to admit their colossal error (he was a convicted embezzler before this started, for chrissakes)- but I suspect they'll blame it on Jordan for being the messenger.

Embarassing
Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.
Brilliant, just brilliant. If all this is accurate, the US has been made to look the FOOL- AGAIN. As if this couldn't get any worse ...
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Post by Gil Hamilton »

That's the problem with trying to rebuild Iraq, just about anyone in a country with Iraqs history that is capable of leadership and in a position to be put in charge probably has a large history of being a huge criminal thug or one of Saddam's boys or both.

But if alot of the intelligence the US received in it's decision to attack Iraq was funnelled via this guy from Iran, that's a major bad whoops. I agree with Vympel, it's going to be funny as hell how they are going to spin this in order to look like it's not an incredibly bad move on their part.
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