Swindler on a Gusher

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" Zepp " <zepp

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 14:49:37 -0700

[Zepps_News] Dowd: Swindler on a Gusher

 

 

 

 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/opinion/30dowd.html?hp>

Swindler on a Gusher

By MAUREEN DOWD

 

Published: April 30, 2005

 

 

The Iraqis have thrown us another curveball.

 

Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy,

double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating

intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister.

 

Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set

the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher?

 

Does anybody still think the path to war wasn't greased by oil?

 

The neocons' con man had been paid millions by the U.S. to tell the

Bushies what they wanted to hear on Iraqi W.M.D. A year ago, the State

Department and factions in the Pentagon turned on him after he began

bashing America and using Saddam's secret files to discredit his enemies.

 

Right after the invasion, the charlatan was escorted into Iraq by U.S.

troops and cultivated an axis of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians. He got

a fancy house with layers of armed guards and pulled-down shades, and

began helping himself to Iraqi assets. The U.S. occupation sicced the

Iraqi police on his headquarters only after an Iraqi judge ordered thugs

in the Chalabi posse arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, torture and

theft.

 

Newsweek revealed that the U.S. suspected Mr. Chalabi of leaking secret

information about American war plans for Iraq to the Iranians before the

invasion, and of perhaps leaking " highly classified " information to Iran

that could " get people killed " if abused by the Iranians. Mr. Chalabi

claimed the Iranians set him up.

 

In August of last year, while he was at a cabin in the Iranian

mountains, the Iraqis ordered him arrested on counterfeiting charges,

which were later dropped for lack of evidence.

 

Now, showing survival skills that make Tom DeLay look like a piker, the

resourceful Thief of Baghdad has popped back up as one of the four

deputy prime ministers and the interim cabinet minister controlling the

one valuable commodity in that wasteland: the second-largest oil

reserves after Saudi Arabia. He even has a DeLay-like talent for getting

relatives on the payroll: a Chalabi nephew is the new finance minister.

 

Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and

International Studies in Washington, told Reuters that many Iraqis would

consider the plum oil job for Mr. Chalabi " putting a fox in charge of

the henhouse. " The choice, he added, " is going to make it extremely easy

for people to make charges about corruption. "

 

Oil isn't on the front burner only in Iraq. Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney

know that time is running out to pay back the Texas buddies who sent

them here with an energy bill. So those two oilmen are frantically

pushing one loaded with giveaways to the oil industry at a time when

it's already raking in huge profits because of high gasoline prices.

 

In Baghdad, we may wind up with a one-man Enron - never underestimate

the snaky charmer. And the draconian efforts of Mr. Chalabi and other

Shiites in power to purge Baathists from the government will breathe

fire into the insurgency.

 

Mr. Bush wanted Iraq to have a democracy like ours. It's on its way,

nearing an ethics-free zone where a corrupt official can hold sway and a

theocracy can curb women's rights.

 

Another big winner in the new Iraqi cabinet is Moktada al-Sadr, the

Shiite cleric who scurried away like a rat across the desert after he

led two armed uprisings and caused a lot of American and Iraqi troops to

die. His political movement got three ministries - health,

transportation and civil society - and Sadr allies will try to give the

scofflaw cleric legal protections so he can slink back into a leadership

role.

 

Ayad Allawi, the Shiite who was supposed to keep the government secular

and bring in Sunnis to blunt the insurgency, has been marginalized. That

leaves the government to be ruled by men rooted in the sort of

conservative Shiite religious politics that will not produce a new dawn

of equality for Iraqi women.

 

The new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is a devout Shiite from the

Dawa Party. As John Burns wrote in The Times yesterday, the Dawa Party

was " fiercely anti-American during their exile years under Mr. Hussein,

and Dawa was implicated by American intelligence in terrorist acts

across the Middle East, including a 1983 bombing of the American Embassy

in Kuwait. "

 

The bad news: This is not an Iraqi government that will practice

Athenian democracy or end the insurgency. The other bad news: If Dr.

Jaafari falls, Ahmad Chalabi will be there to pick up the pieces.

 

E-mail: liberties

--

Election 2004

The Triumph of the Swill

 

 

" The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost

duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation.

It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our

nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation

of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national

life. "

Adolph Hitler, My New World Order,

Proclamation to the German Nation

at Berlin, February 1, 1933

 

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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