On the Chalabi indictments

Well, first, it really couldn’t have happened to a nice pair of guys! How are the mighty fallen, eh? From schmoozing with Laura Bush at the State of the Union to international ignominy within a bare seven months…
Having said that, I should add that I actually feel rather sorry for Uncle Ahmad Chalabi… I can’t believe I am writing these words… but it turns out the amount of counterfeited “old dinars” they are charging him for is around 30,000 old dinars, or about $2.
Truly, with all the problems Iraq is facing these days, the idea of launching a court case, extradition attempt, etc., around that charge is quite mind-boggling.
Or, dare I say it, plainly political?
Uncle Ahmad is now in Iran, having no doubt greased his way in there with a few well-placed donations… Actually, I’m sure they’re delighted to have him. (1) They can maybe carry on milking him for good, ‘insider’ info about the Bushites and their current acolytes in Baghdad. (2) They can keep an eye on him. (Surely no-one in the world would any longer trust this guy further than they could throw him?) (3) If the price is right, they can “give him up” to the highest bidder, should they choose to do so.
It’s young Salem, though, whose situation seems really intriguing.
(1) The case that Iraqi judge Zuhair al-Maliki has brought against him is much more serious than the one against Unca Ahmad. He’s accused of murder in the case of the death in June of Haithem Fadhil, director-general of the Iraqi finance ministry, who’d been looking into Chalabi family finances.
(2) He’s been the lynch-pin in organizing Saddam’s trial there in Baghdad. So now, evidently, the whole course of that trial is in question, too.
(3) He’s in London. We’ll have to see what the British authorities decide to do about him.
Well, I’m too tired to write much more about all this right now. Sometime this week, when I have the energy, I want to write a longer post here about all the many ways in which the situation in Iraq seems to be imploding. So fast… So tragic…
I know it doesn’t help any to say this, but maybe it’s worth reminding ourselves anyway: It didn’t have to be like this. George W. Bush and the ignorant bunch of ideologues you have around you: you all have a lot to answer for.

17 thoughts on “On the Chalabi indictments”

  1. Helena,
    A few stray thoughts about the Chalabi arrest warrants:
    1) No question at all that it’s 100% political.
    2) Without a doubt the current so-called “Iraqi” so-caled “government” doesn’t say anything or do anything without orders from or the approval of their masters in the Republican Palace and Washington DC (`Allawi has certainly come full circle in that regard, hasn’t he, from Saddam’s Republican Palace to Negroponte’s Republican Palace).
    3) It looks to me like getting Chalabi by charging him with counterfeiting a couple of dollars worth of dinars is a “get him on whatever you can prove” move. I was reminded of that huge mobster back in the ’30’s – what was his name? They couldn’t get him for any of his murders, robberies, and so on, so they put him away for tax evasion.
    4) It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that both Chalabis are behind the murder of Haithem Fadhil. I absolutely DO believe the allegations that they had used their position to steal a great deal of real and other property – that whole family has a history of thievery of one kind or another – and I absolutely do believe they would stop at nothing to avoid being caught out in their thievery of what appears largely to have been the property of the Iraqi people. Of course, unlike the thug Iyad `Allawi, the Chalabis would have found a way to do it without dirtying their own hands.
    5) Dilip Hiro, whom I usually listen to seriously on the subject of Iraq and Iran, seems to think charging Salem Chalabi has something to do with demands the Iranians are expected to make to include Saddam’s crimes against Iranians in his putative trial. Apparently Salem has been invited for a visit by the Iranian government. Either Hiro isn’t making any sense, or I don’t understand his point. The idea just doesn’t add up for me.
    6) Be sure this has SOMETHING to do with US domestic politics – everything the Bushies and their agents do in Iraq does. Just what they are hoping to accomplish remains to be seen, but no question at all that scapegoating is at least part of it. And what lovely scapegoats those Chalabis will make!

  2. (email address deliberately misspelled; “hotmail”, not “hotmial”)
    Dear Shirin,
    I was wondering if you would describe the crew currently occupying government offices in Iraq as being dominated by the Iraqi National Accord (INA). Here is my post in which I speculated that it was. Please let me know what errors I might have made in my analysis (sources & methods here).
    If so, would it be true that the INA is beholden to the Saudi government?
    Respectfully yours,
    JRM

  3. Shirin– I agree with you that Hiro’s thesis (as described by you) would seem to make no sense. Actually, it puzzled me, when Salem C and his people described the charges against Saddam, that they had included the crime of aggression against Kuwait but NOT the one against Iran (where the human losses–on both sides–were so very much huger; where there was considerable evidence of the use of chemical weapons; where the ‘political’ advantages inside Iraq of launching such a charge would have been generally more favorable than for the Kwt charge; etc).
    In addition to which, there was Unca Ahmad, hand-in-glove with the Iranians… I guess that led me to think that there might have been a serious difference between the two of them, with Salem much more in the pockets of the Israelis/Americans (and we know why the Americans–esp Rumsfeld–didn’t want all the events of the 1980s dragged out in public, don’t we?) and Ahmad proceeding with building his relationship with the Iranians…
    Anyway, no doubt there will be many further developments in all this. It would read like a particularly gripping soap opera–the Sopranos!– except that the shenanigans of in particular Mr. No. 1 Snake Oil Salesman Ahmad Chalabi played such a huge role in jerking the (extremely willing) Bushies into the war.
    Indict all of ’em is my simple reaction: Rumsfeld, Cheney, the Chalabis, Bush, Allawi, Wolfowitz, Feith, Sharon, Allawi’s dreadful coterie of ex-Baathist colleagues in the so-called government, etc etc etc.

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