The Crawling King Snake Returns

[Guest guest]

" t r u t h o u t " <messenger

 

FOCUS: William Rivers Pitt | The Crawling King Snake Returns

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 09:03:08 -0700

 

FOCUS: William Rivers Pitt | The Crawling King Snake Returns

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042905Y.shtml

 

The news media is reporting, with much fanfare and praise, that the

new Iraqi MPs have appointed people to several cabinet posts, ending

months of acrimonious fighting between factions. The New York Times

reported it this way: " Almost three months after the January

elections, Iraq's national assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve a

Shiite-led cabinet today, creating the first elected government in

Iraqi history. "

 

All is not well in the democratic paradise that is Iraq, however.

The Sunnis, who ruled Iraq through their alliance with Saddam Hussein,

are heavily under-represented in the new parliament because most

Sunnis boycotted the recent election. This lack of representation was

partially addressed by the appointment of several Sunnis to various

cabinet positions.

 

This did not quell passions. Saith the Times, " The leader of the

Shiite political alliance that dominates the assembly and the cabinet,

Abdul Aziz al Hakim, delivered a warlike speech that hinted at purges

to come in the government's security forces. A Sunni Arab assembly

member later stood up to angrily accuse the Shiites of dividing the

country, and even said one member had threatened to gather evidence

that would send him to the gallows. 'This is not a national

government, it is a government of the winners,' said the Sunni member,

Meshaan al Juburi. 'I am here to say that the Sunni Arab members have

been marginalized, and the Sunni Arab political forces should be aware

of that.' "

 

Several cabinet positions remain unfilled - Defense, Oil,

Industry, Electricity and Human Rights - as the arguments continue,

but a few have been filled by so-called temporary ministers. Prime

Minister Ibrahim Jaafari will fill the Defense post until a permanent

cabinet minister can be appointed.

 

Easily the most important cabinet position, the Oil Ministry, will

be filled by a spy, an embezzler, a liar and a fraud. Yes, ladies and

gentlemen, the Crawling King Snake himself, Ahmad Chalabi, got that

most lucrative of gigs. Supposedly this is a temporary posting, but

given Chalabi's alliances with a number of powerful Shia Ministers,

don't hold your breath until he is replaced.

 

You have to love the pestiferous symmetry of this choice. There

sat Chalabi on September 23th, 2003, in the Iraqi chair at the United

Nations for Bush's abjectly humiliating speech to that body. Chalabi

in that chair sent a definite and unavoidable signal to the world:

This is our guy, and if we have our way, he is going to be running

Iraq before too long.

 

Chalabi had been a boon companion of Donald Rumsfeld and the other

neocon hawks who cobbled the war together with a tapestry of lies and

fear-mongering. He was, in fact, Rumsfeld's hand-picked

leader-in-waiting of Iraq as early as 1997, back when the Project for

the New American Century was just coming together. Chalabi was once

head of the Iraqi National Congress, a supposedly 'dissident' group

fighting the rule of Saddam Hussein. The INC was, in fact, a creation

of the CIA during Bush the Elder's term, a burr under Hussein's saddle

once it was decided that this former ally was more trouble than he was

worth.

 

Before and during this most recent Iraq war, Chalabi worked with

the secret Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to spread far and

wide the fiction that Iraq was covered with weapons of mass

destruction and al Qaeda terrorists. It was Chalabi who whispered this

fiction into the ear of Judy Miller at the New York Times. Miller then

reported it, thus giving the entire corporate media permission to

spread it far and wide. If the Times says it, you see, it must be true.

 

A lot of this war belongs to Mr. Chalabi, so it is only

appropriate that he be given the Oil Ministry, where he can wet his

beak with abandon. He is no stranger to the process; Chalabi was

convicted of 32 counts of bank fraud and sentenced to 22 years'

imprisonment by a Jordanian court in 1992. He did not serve a day of

the term, however, having fled the country before the hammer came

down. With his new position, he can put those old skills to work for a

far greater financial return.

 

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. For the first

time in Iraq's history, there are long lines at the gas pumps. Iraqis

are required to wait for two days, sleeping in their cars, to get a

rationed 7.5 liters of gas. Iraq is sitting on the second-largest

proven stores of petroleum on the planet, and yet there are gas lines.

 

As journalist Dahr Jamail reported, the petroleum infrastructure

under the control of the American military and American contractors is

in good shape despite daily bomb attacks. They can pump the oil, but

they aren't. Instead, they are sitting on it. For what purpose, no one

is quite sure. Now that Chalabi is running that ministry, however, the

gas lines are sure to continue.

 

And then there is the darker underbelly of Mr. Chalabi's checkered

career. Back in May of 2004, the CIA came out with " rock-solid "

evidence that Chalabi was an agent of the Iranian government, that he

used his position with the Bush administration to push false data upon

the gullible hawks in Washington. According to a report by Julian

Borger in the UK Guardian, " The CIA has hard evidence that Mr. Chalabi

and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to

Tehran, and that Mr. Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several

years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions. "

 

" The implications, " wrote Borger, " are far-reaching. Mr. Chalabi

and Mr. Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi

weapons on which Washington built its case for war. 'It's pretty clear

that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner,' said an

intelligence source in Washington yesterday. 'Iranian intelligence has

been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi.' Larry

Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state

department, said: 'When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that

Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in

history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest

enemy.' "

 

A thief, liar, fraud and spy now runs the Oil Ministry in Iraq.

Just when you think Bush administration foreign policy cannot produce

any more farcical sideshows, something like this happens and we

realize that the bottom of the barrel has not yet been reached. This

is democracy in the modern American style, it seems.

 

There are some domestic parallels. Yesterday, the House of

Representatives folded under intense pressure and voted 406-20 to

reinstate the ethics rules that had been cast aside only weeks before.

The move to get rid of the rules was done to protect House majority

leader Tom DeLay, who stands accused of a series of truly epic ethics

violations. Now that the rules are back in place, DeLay is going to

face a withering investigation of how he has operated.

 

My suggestion: DeLay should skip the country, head to Iraq, become

a Shia and take that open position as Minister of Human Rights. It

would be par for the course, and as far as ethics go, he would be in

good company with Mr. Chalabi.

 

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally

bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't

Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. Join the

discussions at his blog forum.

 

-------