Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
Bill
and Kathleen Christison
The US Can't Win
Vijay
Prashad
For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004
Ray
Hanania
Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.?
Greg
Moses
Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC
Michael
Gillespie
Who is Kenneth deGraffenried?
Josh
Frank
Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry?
Gary
Corseri
Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave
Kevin
Alexander Gray
If Malcolm Were Alive
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
May
26, 2004
Chalabi
and the Iranians
The
Trail to Tehran
By
ANDREW COCKBURN
In the aftermath of last week's raid
by Iraqi's police and US forces on the elegant Baghdad mansion
currently inhabited by Ahmad Chalabi (it actually belongs to
his sister), his angry spokesman cited as evidence of the intruders'
barbarity the fact that they seized "even his holy Koran
- his personal holy Koran was taken as a document".
If reports that US intelligence
has at last woken up to Chalabi's Iranian connection are true,
then taking his Koran may have been more than personal spite,
since, according to a former close associate, the Pentagon's
erstwhile favorite Iraqi owns one bearing an affectionate inscription
from the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself, evidence of
how deep and long standing a relationship he has had with the
Islamic Republic. "Ahmad helped Iran very much during the
war [the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s]," recalls this former
associate and friend. "Khomeini was very pleased, and he
sent him a copy of the Holy Koran inscribed 'To My Son Ahmed.'"
Another former colleague who,
like so many, has subsequently fallen out with Chalabi, explains
that, "It was during the Iraq/Iran war that Ahmad discovered
the value of information as a commodity, that it was something
you could trade, buy and sell, and he has used that ever since."
Chalabi has vehemently rejected
allegations that he was operating on behalf of Tehran as "a
lie a fib and silly". He has accused the CIA director George
Tenet of conducting a smear campaign against him. During that
war, Chalabi was resident in Amman, busily trading the Petra
bank into a bankruptcy that eventually almost collapsed the Jordanian
economy. But he was also endearing himself to US officials in
Amman with the quality of his intelligence on the war. "I
could get an answer on any question about what was going on in
10 minutes out of Ahmad," recalls one former US ambassador
with affection.
By the end of 1991, Chalabi
was deep in business with the CIA, following up on an opportunity
he had scented early on. "The United States is prepared
to allocate substantial sums for the Iraqi opposition,"
he confided to an opposition activist soon after the 1991 war.
"We should go for that money." The Langley spooks liked
what they saw in him - his efficiency, his readiness to tell
interlocutors what they wanted to hear, not to mention the source
of his cash. The presumption that Chalabi's activities were funded
by money embezzled from the Petra bank ensured that few initially
suspected his true sponsor: the CIA. (Chalabi has always maintained
that the charges brought against him in relation to the Petra
bank affair were politically motivated.) His new handlers showed
no sign of being bothered about his links to Iran, not even after
he moved to the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan in 1992 and recruited
a Shia Kurd named Arras Karim Habib to organise his security
and intelligence.
"Arras was brought up
in Iran. He was always an Iranian agent," insists a fellow
veteran of those days in the mountains, "a double agent
really, for both the Iranians and the Americans, but always for
the Iranians first." "The CIA knew that Arras was an
Iranian agent from the early 90s," says Bob Baer, a longtime
covert operator who, for a period in the mid 1990s, was the senior
CIA official posted to northern Iraq. "They were really
pissed about it, pissed about Chalabi's dealing with the Iranians
in general, like the time he forged  a
letter from the National Security Council saying that the NSC
had authorised the assassination of Saddam Hussein and left it
on his desk for the Iranians to find." Meanwhile, Baer discovered
that while the CIA was paying Chalabi an extortionate rent, the
Iranian intelligence contingent in the mountain town of Salahaddin,
where the INC was based, were enjoying their quarters gratis,
courtesy of Chalabi.
The CIA may have thought that
at least Chalabi was serving his two masters to the same end:
opposition to the regime of Saddam Hussein. But an obscure episode
in the hunt for Saddam's banned weapons during those years points
to the Iranians' use of Chalabi in something far more serious:
the manipulation of US foreign policy through the production
of fake intelligence. It was an operation that may ultimately
have helped bring about the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Early in the winter of 1994,
Chalabi had a visitor from Baghdad named Khidir Hamza, who announced
himself as a senior member of Saddam's nuclear weapons team with
much to reveal about the ongoing bomb programme being pursued
by the dictator under the noses of the UN inspection teams. Chalabi
in turn handed him to one of the resident spooks, who contacted
Langley to see if they were interested in sponsoring this defector.
After quizzing Hamza over the shortwave radio, a CIA nuclear
expert at headquarters concluded that Hamza had nothing to offer
and declined to assist his passage to the US.
It was a wise decision. As
veterans of the Iraqi bomb program have subsequently revealed,
Hamza grossly exagerrated his nuclear bombmaking credentials
while downplaying the role his Ba'athist connections had played
in advancing his scientific career. Imad Khadduri, the Iraqi
nuclear physicist in charge of all documentation for the bomb
project later scathingly reported that Hamza had a "deep
inner fear of radiation" which "prevented him from
ever entering the reactor hall or touching any scientific gadgets,
probably due to his continual fear of an electric jolt that he
experienced as a child". This paranoia, a significant drawback
for a nuclear weapons builder, meant that his work was confined
to theoretical research, well away from any actual experimentation.
"He did not," says Khadduri, "even remotely, get
involved in any scientific research, except for journalistic
articles, dealing with the fission bomb, its components or its
effects."
Cultivating a relationship
with Hussein Kamal, Saddam's loutish cousin who was for a period
all powerful as head of the weapons programmes and much else
beside, Hamza nevertheless served briefly as head of the bomb
design team in 1987, before being relegated to a makework job
before being sacked, according to Khadduri, for filching air
conditioners from the office. He then sank into obscurity before
surfacing in Kurdistan in 1994.
Even though the nuclear experts
in Langley rejected him as an intelligence source, documents
provided by him found their way to the International Atomic Energy
Agency's teams investigating the Iraqi bomb programme. Early
in 1995, an IAEA "Action Team" descended on the offices
of the Iraqi nuclear programme in Baghdad. They had with them
a 20-page document that apparently originated from inside "Group
4," the Iraqi government department that had been responsible
for designing Saddam's nuclear bomb. The stationery, page numbering,
and stamps all appeared authentic, according to one senior member
of the Iraqi bomb team.
"It was a 'progress report,'"
he recalls, "about 20 pages, on the work in Group 4 departments
on the results of their continued work after 1991. It referred
to results of experiments on the casting of the hemispheres [ie
the bomb core of enriched uranium] with some crude diagrams."
As evidence that Iraq was successfully pursuing a nuclear bomb
in defiance of sanctions and the inspectors, it was damning.
However, after a thorough investigation, the IAEA concluded that
the document, as one official recently confirmed to me by email,
was "determined not to be authentic." The official
later told me on the phone that the document originated with
Khidir Hamza, a point confirmed by an Action Team veteran.
The IAEA had an excellent source
to confirm that the document was forged - none other than Hamza's
old boss, Hussein Kamal. In August, 1995, Kamal, until then considered
to be the second most powerful man in Iraq, defected to Jordan.
Soon after his arrival, the former Iraqi weapons supremo spoke
freely to senior UN inspection officials. In one session, the
IAEA's Professor Maurizio Zifferero showed Kamal the document.
Kamal, according to the transcript, immediately recognised it
as a forgery, a view in which the official concurred, adding
that "Dr Khidir Abdul Abbas Hamza is related to this document".
"He is a professional
liar," said Kamal. "He worked with us, but he was useless
and was always looking for promotions. He consulted with me but
could not deliver anything."
Kamal suggested that the document
might have been faked by Egyptian intelligence, but the Iraqi
scientists had found clues pointing in another direction. Some
of the technical descriptions used terms that would only be used
by an Iranian. "Most notable," says Khadduri, "was
the use of the term 'dome' - 'Qubba' in Iranian, instead of 'hemisphere'
- 'Nisuf Kura' in Arabic." In other words, the document
had to have been originally written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist
and then translated into Arabic.
The Iranians, it seemed, were
supplying fake information designed to show that Saddam was pursuing
his efforts to build weapons of mass destruction, and therefore
the onerous UN economic sanctions, despite their civilian toll,
should be kept in place.
There is no evidence that Hamza,
who eventually found his way to the United States and a lucrative
career as "Saddam's Bombmaker," ever visited Iran.
But, while roosting at Chalabi's headquarters in northern Iraq,
he had been in close proximity to many Iranian agents, including
of course (according to the CIA) Arras Karem Habib.
In subsequent years, of course
Chalabi produced a stream of defectors attesting to Saddam's
iniquitous weapons initiatives. Though their stories turned out
to be utterly fallacious, they had a superficial credibility,
the product, as one former UN inspector told me, of "very
skillful coaching".
Chalabi was not shy about his
Iranian intelligence connections. "When I met him in December
1997 he said he had tremendous connections with Iranian intelligence,"
recalls Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector. "He
said that some of his best intelligence came from the Iranians
and offered to set up a meeting for me with the head of Iranian
intelligence." Had Ritter made the trip (the CIA refused
him permission), he would have been dealing with Chalabi's chums
in Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence, a faction which
regarded Saddam with a venomous hatred spawned both by the bloody
war of the 1980s and the Iraqi dictator's continuing support
of the terrorist Mojaheddin Khalq group.
The CIA knew, as Bob Baer makes
clear, that Chalabi had close Iranian connections. They knew
that before the war he had meetings with Iranian intelligence
officials, including the Revolutionary Guard intelligence official
responsible for Iraq, General Sirdar Jaffari. But whatever their
distaste for their former protege, they were unable to counter
his influence and favour with the neo-conservatives clustered
in the Pentagon and Vice-President Cheney's office who were beguiled
by Chalabi.
Only in recent weeks has Chalabi's
increasingly disruptive performance in Baghdad, denouncing the
efforts of UN envoy Lakhdar Ibrahim to craft a post June 30 settlement,
goaded the administration into abandoning their friend, permitting
the raid on his house and the leaking of reports that he has
been funneling American secrets to Tehran. After serving, or
using, two masters for so long, Chalabi is now linked only with
Iran, a position which may serve him well in garnering support
among the Iraqi Shia masses.
Baer, who served in the CIA
outpost in the mid 1990s, says that "a lot of people in
the CIA believe that the Iranians used Chalabi, and or Arras,
to manipulate us into a war. Maybe they just thought they were
steering us to keep up the pressure on Saddam, keeping him under
sanctions and no fly zones, never dreaming that he would actually
get the US to go to war and put the US army right on the Iranian
border. It's the law of unintended consequences."
Andrew Cockburn is the co-author of Out
of the Ashes: the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein and a contributor
to CounterPunch's hot new history of the last three US military
operations, Imperial
Crusades. He wishes to acknowledge the generous support of
the Graydon Carter Foundation in the preparation of this article.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
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