Good help is hard to find

[shereads]

If you can't trust a man convicted of bank fraud, who can you trust? My faith is shattered.

Questions Follow Chalabis' Warrants
Both Question Motives, Vow to Fight Charges

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 10, 2004; Page A13


Counterfeiting charges against Ahmed Chalabi and murder charges against his nephew provoked a dizzying array of questions yesterday among both Iraqis and U.S. officials -- and even fueled some suspicion that the warrants may have been designed in part to affect the country's politics at a pivotal moment in its transition.

An Iraqi judge charged the two men simultaneously Sunday when both were out of the country. The warrants came a week before a national conference in which Chalabi was widely expected to make a play to revive his troubled political career.

Officials in Baghdad and Washington were unsure what exactly was going on. "If you're dealing with political figures, it's hard to say politics is not part of the equation. But then again, to say there is somehow a conspiracy that has been orchestrated over some time is grasping at straws. It's hard to substantiate," said a senior State Department official familiar with the charges.

Both men yesterday pledged to fight the allegations. Ahmed Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite, charged that the CIA and followers of Saddam Hussein are out to discredit him. "There are also non-Iraqis involved. . . . [Former CIA director George J.] Tenet and his organization are after me. Tenet is gone, but I can tell you this process is continuing," he told Agence France-Presse from Iran. The CIA dismissed the charges as "ridiculous."

In an e-mailed statement, Chalabi called the judge, Zuhair Maliky, an unqualified magistrate put in place by the United States: "He has consistently attempted to manipulate the justice system. . . . He has pursued a political vendetta against the Iraqi National Congress," the political party Chalabi formed when he was in exile.

Salem Chalabi, who is wanted for questioning in the killing of a Finance Ministry official investigating the Chalabis, said he never met the man. The charges reportedly allege Chalabi threatened Haithem Fadhil if he did not drop the inquiry into whether homes and property belonging to former Iraqi officials were confiscated by the Chalabis and their supporters.

"I don't have any recollection of meeting him. I've never been in his office. I don't own any properties in Iraq. I stay at a friend's house. These allegations, to say the least, are ludicrous," Chalabi told the Associated Press in London. He said the charges had political motives with ominous implications about the future of Iraq.

The controversy began on Sunday when Maliky issued warrants against the Chalabis, both U.S.-educated former exiles well connected in Washington. Ahmed Chalabi, who sat with first lady Laura Bush at the State of the Union address this year, was once envisioned by some U.S. policymakers as a potential successor to Hussein. But he has fallen into disfavor after weapons of mass destruction that were alleged to be in Iraq failed to materialize.

He was also one of 25 members of Iraq's now-disbanded Governing Council but was notably excluded from the new interim Iraqi government selected by U.S. and U.N. officials. He was criticized this spring for allegedly informing Iran that U.S. intelligence had cracked Tehran's encryption codes.

 

[Clare Quilty]

There are plots within plots afoot on desert Arrakis--still the spice must flow.

By the way, who loves ya, baby?

 

[Vincent E]

There are plots within plots afoot on desert Arrakis--still the spice must flow.

By the way, who loves ya, baby?

Mood is a thing for cattle and women, young pup.

--Quickly hijacking this into the Frank Herbert quotes from Dune thread.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Chalabi rules. No one man has done so much to get the US embroiled in a needles and inappropriate war since WIlliam Randolph Hearst started the Spanish-American fandango as a way to sell more papers. Chalabi had Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz wrapped around his little finger. He was the one who told them they didn't have to worry about occupying Iraq after the war because the Iraqis were just dying to start up their own western-style democracy, and they bought it! Talk about your wiley middle-easterners!

But what happened? I thought they had found that Chalabi was spying for the Iranians.

---dr.M.

 

[OldnotDead]

Chalabi rules. No one man has done so much to get the US embroiled in a needles and inappropriate war since WIlliam Randolph Hearst started the Spanish-American fandango as a way to sell more papers. Chalabi had Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz wrapped around his little finger. He was the one who told them they didn't have to worry about occupying Iraq after the war because the Iraqis were just dying to start up their own western-style democracy, and they bought it! Talk about your wiley middle-easterners!

But what happened? I thought they had found that Chalabi was spying for the Iranians.

---dr.M.

and did anyone notice that in the quoted rebuttal from Chalabi, the dateline was Iran? Curiouser and Curiouser.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

and did anyone notice that in the quoted rebuttal from Chalabi, the dateline was Iran? Curiouser and Curiouser.

Yeah. Supposedly he's "vacationing" there.

Must be Tehran's famous nightlife that attracted him.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

Dr. M, if you think Cheney was fooled, you have a higher opinion of him than I do.

Chalabi didn't just pop out of the blue and volunteer his services. He'd been rejected as unreliable by the State Department, and repeatedly by the previous administration, for the obvious reason: he wanted us to invade Iraq, and could be expected to provide "intelligence" that would encourage an invasion.

You want a quick, relatively bloodless war? One that can accommodate your tax cuts without bankrupting the economy? No problem. By November 2003, you'll all be heros. While naysayers like Cleland and Howard Dean are eating their words, the troops will be home in time for Thanksgiving turkey.

Of course, there's the little matter of Chalabi's fraud conviction in Jordan, but you don't dismiss an intelligence source over one proven instance of dishonesty.

Dick Cheney isn't stupid. I think he knew exactly what to expect from Chalabi, and I think it has served him well.

Rumsfeld's career may have suffered, but it was his own arrogance that led him to bet on a con. Wolfowitz remains under the radar; he'll pop up someplace in another incarnation, like a vampire.

Cheney used Chalabi to provide GWB with the one thing he needed before invading Iraq: plausible deniability.

Cheney's agenda has never relied on the success or failure of democracy in Iraq. He's a global power broker, not an American one. As proof, you only need to remember how his company responded to trade sanctions against Saddam - not by pulling out of Iraq, but by doing business under foreign-registered subsidiaries.

If a future Iraqi regime isn't friendly to America, how much will it matter to a man whose interests are multinational? A little anarchy isn't necessarily bad for business.

Saddam was a huge clog in the drainpipe; the trade sanctions were a smaller one. Now things are flowing again.

What if Chalabi was conned this time?

 

[shereads]

Speaking of stunning surprises...

Analysis
Tax Cuts Become A Juicier Target

By Mike Allen and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 11, 2004; Page A04


For President Bush, tax cuts have been an all-purpose elixir, a cure for budget surpluses and a bursting stock bubble, for terrorist attacks and boardroom scandals, for the march to war and a jobless recovery in peacetime.

Now, after three successive tax cuts, and after a record budget surplus has turned to a record deficit, the president faces an unenviable choice. He can either concede that his $1.7 trillion tonic has not worked as advertised, or he can insist that the economy is strong despite the slowdown in growth and job creation.

Last week's news of stagnant job creation has revived the debate over the effectiveness of the tax cuts, the centerpiece of Bush's domestic program. Economists of all political stripes say the tax cuts did jump-start the economy, which was in recession from March to November 2001. But to many, that kick is starting to look more like a sugar high than a cure for the economy's underlying weaknesses.

On Monday, Morgan Stanley's chief economist, Stephen S. Roach, dubbed this "The Mythical Recovery," hooked on three drugs now in increasingly short supply: tax cuts, rising government spending and low interest rates.

"Lacking in the organic staying power of job creation and wage earnings, the U.S. economy has become addicted to the steroids of extraordinary monetary and fiscal support," Roach told clients. "But with policy levers pushed to the max, the lifeline of support is now dangerously thin."

Democratic White House challenger John F. Kerry pounced yesterday, releasing a report on "George Bush's failed fiscal policies" and unleashing former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin to decry the failure of the tax cuts and "the horrendous long-term fiscal situation" they have put the country in. The charge -- even if incomplete -- has the ring of truth, said Gregory R. Valliere, managing director of the bipartisan Schwab Research Group.

"The jobs figures allow Kerry to say that the recovery is sputtering and the tax cuts didn't help much," he said. "It's a credible argument now. Kerry can say for the next month that the tax cuts didn't work. And he can say that with some justification: The tax cuts worked for a few months, but the impact has faded."

But the administration has its backers. "Who knows what the economy would have looked like without the tax-cut packages?" asked Stephen Gallagher, chief economist at the investment firm S.G. Cowen & Co. "We might not be happy where we are, but it likely would have been much worse."

With the election 83 days away, gasoline prices, the stock market, job-creation figures and economic growth are headed in the wrong direction for an incumbent who wants to run on accomplishments, prosperity and optimism.

Donald H. Straszheim, a former chief economist at Merrill Lynch, told clients of Straszheim Global Advisors Inc. yesterday that the job figures in particular are "potentially decisively bad for President Bush."

The economy has 1.1 million fewer jobs than the day Bush took office, making it more than likely he will join Herbert Hoover as the second president to see the nation suffer a net job loss on his watch. The economy is 7 million jobs short of the level the White House had predicted when trying to sell the tax cuts. And a 10-year budget outlook that in 2001 projected $5.6 trillion in surpluses now foresees $2.7 trillion in deficits, an unprecedented fiscal swing.

Republican strategists say Bush is so closely associated with the tax cuts that he has no choice but to defend them. Rather than acknowledging failure, Bush aides said, they plan to keep making the case that the president's leadership and the trio of tax cuts kept the recession of 2001 shallow and short, avoiding a double-dip recession and helped the nation recover from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the corporate accounting scandals of 2002.

Administration officials said they plan to explain the economy's straits by saying energy prices are creating a head wind on what is otherwise a fundamentally sound economy, and that the fundamentals of the economy -- including an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent -- have improved under Bush.

"The economy is strong, and it's getting better," Bush said in the Oval Office on Monday, repeating a months-old mantra from the campaign trail. "In spite of a recession, emergency, attacks, war and corporate scandals, we're growing, and growing quite substantially. We've added nearly 1.5 million jobs over the last 12 months."

The president did not mention that those went toward replacing 2.6 million that were lost during his term.

Democrats contend that such rhetoric makes Bush look out of touch -- the rap that was lethal to his father's reelection effort in 1992. The Democratic National Committee on Monday announced a 20-state tour to economically depressed towns that is designed to highlight Bush's economic record.

The party also announced plans to add a Hoover Meter to its Web site to measure job losses.