November 16, 2005

Longstanding CIA asset, Ahmad Chalabi is back in town. Yesterday, Chalabi had visited Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and the president’s National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley. Chalabi is now deemed to be the primary candidate for Prime Minister of US-Occupied Iraq, an office to which he will ascend after the forthcoming elections in Iraq that will take place next month.

In spite of his impeccable neoconservative credentials, Chalabi has a chequered background. He is from a prominent family of Islamic bankers in pre-Saddam Iraq . He left Iraq in 1956 and studied mathematics at the University of Chicago at the same time as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Avram Shulsky, who now heads the Office of Special Plans in Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. At the University of Chicago , Chalabi became closely associated with Albert Wohlstetter, the closest friend of Leo Strauss, the founding father of neoconservativism.

Subsequently, all of the leading lights in the Strauss circle became members of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a prominent neoconservative think tank. Even though he is a Shiite Muslim, Chalabi also joined the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), an organization that promotes the integration of the national security agendas of Israel and the United States . Other neoconservative members of JINSA include: Michael Ledeen; Jack Kemp; Steve Israel (D-NY); Connie Mack; Jeanne Kirkpatrick and James Woolsey. Chalabi even lectured on the crucial dual role of Iraq and Israel in the middle east for JINSA.

In both JINSA and the AEI it is common knowledge that Chalabi has promised his neoconservative associates that he will reopen diplomatic relations with Israel and re-activate the oil pipeline to Haifa if he becomes Prime Minister of Iraq. This prospect now seems very likely. Chalabi is heading a ticket of secular Shiite candidates in next month’s election. His recent visit to DC is a thinly disguised series of negotiations aimed at setting policy for the post-election period.

It must be noted that Ahmad Chalabi has some very curious associations for a potential leader of the "democratic" reincarnation of Iraq . In Baghdad , he commands a private army with its own private internal security force. The head of Chalabi’s security force is one, Araz Habib. Curiously, Chalabi’s nephew, Salem Chalabi, was the Chief Prosecutor of Saddam Hussein, until he was sacked following his indictment on serious criminal charges. Furthermore, it is even more curious that Salem Chalabi is a legal associate of Zell & Feith, the Tel-Aviv law office Douglas Feith, the former Under-Secretary of the Pentagon and a stalwart proponent of neoconservative aggression in the middle east.

The conventional wisdom would be that Zionist credentials would not find favor in "democratic" Iraq , but the opposite is apparently the case. While Chalabi’s official relationship with the CIA is a matter of public record, but any official association between Chalabi and the state security services of Israel such as Mossad or Shin Beth have never been made public.

During Chalabi’s brief visit to Washington , he has lectured to the AEI and met with top-ranking officials in the Bush government. At the same time, there has been yet another high-level assassination in Baghdad killing one of the leading attorneys for the group of defendants in the trial of his enemy, Saddam Hussein. Only yesterday, there were a series of terrorist attacks in Jordan , where Chalabi first rose to financial notoriety when he was indicted and convicted of massive bank fraud involving over $160 million that disappeared into numbered Swiss bank accounts. It seems strangely coincidental that these disasters would strike Chalabi’s enemies at the same time that he is lobbying the Bush government in Washington .

In his lengthy career, Ahmad Chalabi has consistently advocated a fundamental realignment of the middle east to conform with the strategic agenda of Israel along classical neoconservative lines. It must be accepted that Chalabi has consistently represented the interests of Israel in long-standing associations with ranking neoconservatives in the Bush government. There can be no serious question that Chalabi is brazenly positioning himself to succeed to the Prime Minister’s office in US-Occupied Iraq and that his credentials as a stalwart proponent of Israeli objectives are now seen to be the strongest arguments in his favor.

Congressman John Conyers has sent a letter to Ahmad Chalabi requesting a meeting with him during his sojourn in Washington . Congressman Conyers wishes to discuss Chalabi’s role in the manipulation of the bogus intelligence that drove the US into war with Iraq . Congressman Conyers is particularly anxious to interrogate Chalabi specifically about the intelligence provided from his source known mysteriously as, "Curveball."

It now seems inevitable that the erstwhile promoter of "Curveball" and the Zionist realignment of the middle east will soon be holding court at the former palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad as the fully empowered American proconsul and Prime Minister over US-Occupied Iraq.

Conyers Wants to Talk to Chalabi

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110905C.shtml