shereads
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- Jun 6, 2003
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Can anyone think of alternative uses for Ahmad Chalabi's $340,000/month (plus security and expenses, one imagines) cut of the Pentagon budget?
Just now catching up on Newsweek Magazine that arrived while I was on vacation, I read this update on Mr. Chalabi - the Iraqi expat who, you might recall, was paid by the Rumsfeld Defense Department to channel information from defectors/informants and who was a key source of information about WMD. In reply to British journalists when questioned about the falsity of WMD information, Mr. Chalabi, who holds a key position on the Iraqi self-governing board, said, "What matters is that our mission was successful: Saddam is out, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before doesn't matter."
CIA sources told Newsweek that Chalabi offered his assistance as an intelligence resource during the Clinton years, but no one trusted his information because "his evident agenda was to get Clinton to invade Iraq."
Setting aside the lesson about the value of persistence, here's a question:
Can anyone think of a scenario other than this one, under which a paid informant provided information so famously wrong that it made global headlines, has been the subject of Congressional hearings, and led the military to waste time and risk lives searching for WMD, not only continues to be paid months after the information is found to be false but is also rewarded with the role he sought all along?
(I can't help thinking that some informant, somewhere in the chain that led to the White House via Chalabi, watched the search for WMD along with the rest of us but knew there was nothing to find.)
As I prepare to file for my IRS extension, I'm able to think of three, maybe even four other uses for Chalabi's $340,000/month, which is no longer paid by the Defense Department but has been picked up by the Pentagon.
This ticks me off a little. I knew this devious bastard was still lurking, but I didn't know I was still donating to his retirement fund.
Just now catching up on Newsweek Magazine that arrived while I was on vacation, I read this update on Mr. Chalabi - the Iraqi expat who, you might recall, was paid by the Rumsfeld Defense Department to channel information from defectors/informants and who was a key source of information about WMD. In reply to British journalists when questioned about the falsity of WMD information, Mr. Chalabi, who holds a key position on the Iraqi self-governing board, said, "What matters is that our mission was successful: Saddam is out, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before doesn't matter."
CIA sources told Newsweek that Chalabi offered his assistance as an intelligence resource during the Clinton years, but no one trusted his information because "his evident agenda was to get Clinton to invade Iraq."
Setting aside the lesson about the value of persistence, here's a question:
Can anyone think of a scenario other than this one, under which a paid informant provided information so famously wrong that it made global headlines, has been the subject of Congressional hearings, and led the military to waste time and risk lives searching for WMD, not only continues to be paid months after the information is found to be false but is also rewarded with the role he sought all along?
(I can't help thinking that some informant, somewhere in the chain that led to the White House via Chalabi, watched the search for WMD along with the rest of us but knew there was nothing to find.)
As I prepare to file for my IRS extension, I'm able to think of three, maybe even four other uses for Chalabi's $340,000/month, which is no longer paid by the Defense Department but has been picked up by the Pentagon.
This ticks me off a little. I knew this devious bastard was still lurking, but I didn't know I was still donating to his retirement fund.
