http://tinyurl.com/2xj3d
published Atlantic Highlands Herald
13 February 2003
READER'S WRITE Archive
WHO IS THIS CHALIBI? AND WHY DOES BUSH WANT HIM TO LEAD IRAQ?
The letter from Devar, WHY IRAQ NOW, makes some interesting points and analogies, but misses the main reason that Pres. Bush WANTS Iraq now, and that is oil. Lot's of oil, lot's of money for the already wealthy oil empires which Bush and Cheney are part of.
We are told that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction which some has escaped the eyes of all those inspectors for years now. Iraq has no Air Force, no Navy, no means of delivering them even if it had them. Iraq has only a small, demoralized infantry.
Why are we amassing such a huge force to whip a little defenseless third world nation? Pres. Bush and his hawks have bigger things in mind, and unless you have a computer and the time to search for what is behind all this, you will not find the answers. The media is very timid of late, when it comes to revealing what is going on.
From an Australian newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, I learned that an Iraqi diplomat, Mohamed al-Jabiri, who has just returned from in talks with Washington, said the White House has given its "blessing" to the head of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, to lead a transitional coalition government in Iraq once Saddam has been deposed.
Who is this Chalibi, and why does Pres. Bush want him to lead Iraq after we finish mauling it, again? I have learned that Hamid Karzai, Pres. Bush's choice to govern Iraq is the man who wants to use Afghanistan for a pipeline as a segment to connect the riches of the undeveloped oilfields of the Russian caucus basin to the Arabian Sea. The taliban turned down this idea, and became our enemy, as did Hussein when he nationalized Iraq's oilfields.
Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops -- and American oil companies -- in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic hegemony.
Chalabi would hand over Iraq's oil to U.S. multinationals, and his allies in conservative think tanks are already drawing up the blueprints. "What they have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies," says James E. Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Even more broadly, once an occupying U.S. army seizes Baghdad, Chalabi's INC and its American backers are spinning scenarios about dismantling Saudi Arabia, seizing its oil and collapsing the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
What's also startling about these plans is that Chalabi is scorned by most of America's national-security establishment, including much of the Department of State, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is shunned by all Western powers save the United Kingdom, ostracized in the Arab world and disdained even by many of his erstwhile comrades in the Iraqi opposition. Among his few friends, however, are the men running the Bush administration's willy-nilly war on Iraq. And with their backing, it's conceivable that this hapless, exiled Iraqi aristocrat and London-Washington playboy might end up atop the smoking heap of what's left of Iraq next year.
Almost to a man, Washington's chickenhawks lavishly praise Chalabi. "He's a rare find," says Max Singer, a trustee and co-founder of the Hudson Institute. In Washington, Team Chalabi is led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Chalabi's cheerleaders include the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). "Chalabi is the one that we know the best," says Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects for JINSA, where Chalabi has been a frequent guest at board meetings, symposia and other events since 1997. Chalibi is wanted in Jordan for embezzlement of millions from the Petra bank. He was tried in absentia and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
That's Pres. Bush and his new man in Baghdad, perfect together. Meanwhile the taxpayers will finance this scheme to the tune of untold billions of dollars, and pull it off with the loss of American troops. I'll bet nobody ever read about this in our free press, or the TV news.
Note - I wrote this in Feb 2003. No responses
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