Least that’s what WND opines. Quoting:
The early-morning raid on the home and office of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi in Baghdad sends “the wrong message” to America’s would-be allies in the Arab world, former Pentagon official Michael Rubin tells Insight.
“This is a huge blow to America’s prestige,” he said. “The message we’ve just sent is that we do not stand by our allies, that the United States can’t be trusted. We’ve just told Arab liberals and democrats that it’s just plain crazy to work with America.”
Something along the lines that we’ll turn on you in a heartbeat perhaps? Read somewhere too we were putting Baathists back in charge. Even I think that is dumb.
Rubin, who served as an aide to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, spoke with Sunni clerics, Shiite professionals and independent Kurdish businessmen in Iraq in the hours immediately after the Baghdad raid Thursday.
“Everyone in Iraq believes that because of U.S. actions, we are now heading for civil war,” he says. “We have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”
…Francis Brooke, an American aide to Chalabi, was at his home in Baghdad when Iraqi troops supported by 25 U.S. military policemen and “an SUV full of OGA guys” - an acronym commonly used in Baghdad to designate the CIA ["other government agencies"] - stormed the house. Chalabi was awakened by four armed men pointing guns at him.
“I myself stood for an hour with an American military person pointing a gun at my chest,” Brooke told Insight by phone from Baghdad. “It was totally misplaced.”
The raids were carefully orchestrated and appeared part of an effort to embarrass Chalabi.
“They had TV cameras across the street,” Brooke says. “They were hoping to lead out a bunch of guys in handcuffs, but they didn’t find anybody they were looking for.”
Instead, they seized computers, documents relating to the INC’s investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, a family Quran and a set of prayer beads.
Really going to get a lot of information from a Quran and prayer beads. Hey, maybe that was the goal, to hide evidence of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal. Wouldn’t put it past them.
A spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad insisted in a telephone interview with Insight that the raid was not the work of the CPA, but had been ordered by an independent Iraqi judge.
Hardly independent with the CIA involved.
American news reports yesterday gave several variants of the alleged charges against the Chalabi aides, ranging from corruption, fraud and vehicle theft to intimidation and blackmail. But INC sources and Rubin believe there is no doubt that U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer ordered the raid.
“The decision to ‘cut Chalabi down to size’ was taken in Washington,” Rubin said, “but the operation against Chalabi originated in Baghdad. There is no doubt that Bremer signed off on this. Basically, Bremer has gone mad. This raid shows the U.S. has not learned the lessons of Abu Ghraib, and is still trying to humiliate” perceived opponents.
Whether we are or are not, that is what will be perceived and they should have thought of that before going after him.
At a press conference in Baghdad after the raids, Chalabi identified one of the individuals allegedly being sought as Aras Habib, his longtime security and intelligence chief. Before the U.S.-led invasion, Habib ran the INC’s network of informants within Saddam’s regime and identified defectors the INC ultimately helped to escape Iraq.
Chalabi’s detractors claim the intelligence provided by those defectors relating to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs was false or fabricated. But in fact, says Rubin, the INC provided intelligence and human sources at a time when the CIA has no assets inside Iraq at all.
“The CIA hates Chalabi because he comes out with information they do not have and that later gets confirmed,” Rubin says.
Jealousy rears it’s ugly head. Not a good way to conduct a war either. Nothing like screwing a reliable source to further one’s own aims. Ah now we’re getting down to the meat of the problem.
Chalabi also has alienated the State Department, which has taken its cue from neighboring Arab governments seeking to put an end to the experiment in democracy in Iraq and replace the Iraqi Governing Council with a new Arab strongman, Rubin and others believe.
Who needs the French when we have the State Department? Now this is cold.
“The most virulent hatred of Chalabi comes from those who have never met him,” he says. “Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] and U.S. military commanders in Iraq who have worked with the INC have given them stellar reviews. They have used INC intelligence to stop operations by insurgents that were targeting Americans. They have caught insurgents red-handed because of information provided by Chalabi. [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage appear to place greater value on winning bureaucratic battles in Washington than in saving American lives in Iraq.”
The most extravagant allegation against Chalabi was launched Thursday evening by Dan Rather and 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl on the CBS Evening News. In what Rather portrayed as an “exclusive report,” CBS claimed that U.S. intelligence operatives were seeking to arrest Chalabi because he had delivered “top-secret U.S. intelligence” to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The intelligence was so sensitive, Rather ventilated, that it could “get Americans killed.”
When it comes to unreliable sources, Rather is right up there. Didn’t even credit his source either. Interesting this, one of the so called experts, Pat Lang, also a CBS News consultant, isn’t exactly neutral either.
In citing Lang as an expert on Iraq, neither CBS nor the Washington Post ever has mentioned that Lang has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for an Arab government.
It gets better. Back to Chalabi…
Chalabi appears to have been instrumental in getting the Iranian government to drop its support for radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, several sources say.
That was a big thing in our favor btw. We don’t want radicals working with Iran. And naturally, after being so helpful, we mess it up. What were they thinking? CIA and State Department don’t like Bush perhaps? Be careful who we ally ourselves with or they may stab us in the back. And I’m not referring to foreign governments either.
