Tools.
This, this is rich:
Agency: Chalabi group was front for Iran
BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU
May 21, 2004, 7:29 PM EDT
WASHINGTON – The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.
“Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein,” said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.
The Information Collection Program also “kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing” by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years.
An administration official confirmed that “highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel.”
The Defense Department this week halted payment of $340,000 a month to Chalabi’s program. Chalabi had long been the favorite of the Pentagon’s civilian leadership. Intelligence sources say Chalabi himself has passed on sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Iranians.
Patrick Lang, former director of the intelligence agency’s Middle East branch, said he had been told by colleagues in the intelligence community that Chalabi’s U.S.-funded program to provide information about weapons of mass destruction and insurgents was effectively an Iranian intelligence operation. “They [the Iranians] knew exactly what we were up to,” he said.
He described it as “one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history.”
“I’m a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work,” he said.
An intelligence agency spokesman would not discuss questions about his agency’s internal conclusions about the alleged Iranian operation. But he said some of its information had been helpful to the U.S. “Some of the information was great, especially as it pertained to arresting high value targets and on force protection issues,” he said. “And some of the information wasn’t so great.”
At the center of the alleged Iranian intelligence operation, according to administration officials and intelligence sources, is Aras Karim Habib, a 47-year-old Shia Kurd who was named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid on Chalabi’s home and offices in Baghdad Thursday. He eluded arrest.
Karim, who sometimes goes by the last name of Habib, is in charge of the information collection program.
The intelligence source briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s conclusions said that Karim’s “fingerprints are all over it.”
“There was an ongoing intelligence relationship between Karim and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, all funded by the U.S. government, inadvertently,” he said.
Via Julia, though this one’s climbing the charts like mad. Why not? It isn’t every day you discover that your own government may have been so mind-boggling stupid. If this pans out, do the math: we took out Hussein’s government, doing all the dirty work and stirring up the shit until every tenth orphaned widower has taken up arms against us, while Iran waits quietly, patiently, to pick up the pieces when all’s said and mostly done.
We were their fucking flypaper.
But that’s not the funny bit; that’s not the funny bit, by half. No, the funny bit is this:
The tools are still going to figure out a way to blame it all on us.
This exercise in Dolchstasslegende brought to you by cartoonist Cerdipity, by way of Dean Esmay. Thanks to Orcinus.
Housekeeping: the Newsday article cited (rather in full) above has moved from here to here. What’s where it was now is an innoccuous AP piece about how Chalabi is “turning to politics for survival.”
Commenting is closed for this article.
I find it amusing that anyone seriously continues to suggest that if a cartoon looks like something Nazis used once, that makes it a bit of Nazi propaganda.
Anyone who looks carefully at the cartoon can see it for what it is, by the way: it was in response to a vile bit of hate-spewage from Indymedia which put Nazi regalia on the Time Person of the Year photo of American troops--i.e. a far-left piece that smeared American troops as Nazis. And that piece is of a piece with the many other hate-smears from the left that do more than merely object to the war, but which implies that our troops are regularly targeting civilians.
Then again, taking things out of context is what people on the left so habitually do when it comes to things like this, so I shouldn't be surprised to see it being done yet again.
By the way would it make you feel better to learn that Chalabi became most prominent in Washington due to all the people in the Clinton administration who liked him?
No, I suppose not.
People have unrealistic expectations of intelligence services. But this war has showed us that in more than one way, hasn't it?
Word(s) to the wise: situating something in a broader historical context is not taking it out of context. You can argue that Cerdipity (like Dave Brown) was apparently ignorant of the history of the image, or did not consciously intend to evoke it, but you can't deny it's being read in that light, just as you can't deny that right here, right now, the neoconservatives and reactionary right are casting about for some slender thread to blame this clusterfuck on anyone but them. (The current frontrunner, of course, is that we have lost our will, thanks to rude things said by unwashed protestors, and media coverage that never ever ac-cent-tchu-ated the positive; stabbed in the back. Darn those meddling leftists!)
Oh, anent that—when the motion is Proposed: The Right will leave no stone unturned in its attempt to blame the current clusterfuck on the Left, and you are in the opposition, it does no good, no good at all, to play the "Clinton made us do it" card.
An Open Challenge: The American Myrmidon?
The following image appeared on the well-travelled left-wing web site known as "Indymedia," a.k.a. "The Independent Media Center," on 22 December 2003: That's right. One...
I certainly cannot deny that the image drawn by Cerdipity bears some passing resemblance to images drawn by Nazis. Anymore than I can deny that George Lucas' movies Star Wars bears some passing resemblance in part to Leni Riefenstahl's Triump of the Will.
Or no more than I can deny that Adolph Hitler's National Socialist party advocated strict environmental protection, national health care, ora national freeway system (a.k.a. "The Autobahn.").
So what? Are you honestly suggesting that anyone who advocates anything that Hitler advocated it secretly a Nazi apologist or advocate? If so there are a lot of vegetarians and dog-lovers who you think are secretly Nazis
In closing: I do not believe that the situation in Iraq is in any way the fault of "the left." I merely blame the left--of which I am a former member--for playing the childish game of "things ain't going perfect therefore you suck" game that any child could play.Those of you on the so-called "left" opposed taking out a brutal,mass-murdering dictator, one of the worst human-rights abusing mosnters of the last century. And your entire "moral victory" is that things aren't going perfectly in Iraq? How nice for you.
...situating something in a broader historical context is not taking it out of context. You can argue that Cerdipity (like Dave Brown) was apparently ignorant of the history of the image...
More to the point, I'd argue that only a strained and historically ignorant partisan would even try to make such a comparison....
..., but you can't deny it's being read in that light, just as you can't deny that right here, right now, the neoconservatives and reactionary right are casting about for some slender thread to blame this clusterfuck on anyone but them.
I deny it right here and now, because you have to be an historical ignoramus to make such an idiotic statement.
: The Right will leave no stone unturned in its attempt to blame the current clusterfuck on the Left, and you are in the opposition, it does no good, no good at all, to play the "Clinton made us do it" card.
I have, as yet, to see a single example of this happening.
But perhaps I've missed something. Would you care to point me to an example of it?
Or is this just more left-wing hatemongering in the guise of thought?
Dean Esmay, former leftist.
Am still waiting for you to both acknowledge and denounce this, by the way.
i thought chalabi became the most prominent man in washington coz of bcci..
RIGHT HON. ESMAY: By the way would it make you feel better to learn that Chalabi became most prominent in Washington due to all the people in the Clinton administration who liked him?
YR. HUMBLE HOST: Oh, anent that—when the motion is Proposed: The Right will leave no stone unturned in its attempt to blame the current clusterfuck on the Left, and you are in the opposition, it does no good, no good at all, to play the “Clinton made us do it” card.
RIGHT HON. ESMAY: I have, as yet, to see a single example of this happening.
But perhaps I’ve missed something. Would you care to point me to an example of it?
Really, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Which means one probably ought to close the browser and go get some real work done.
All seemed lost... when suddenly, Mike Godwin was struck with a heart attack.
More disingenuous bilge from Dean.
The "dolchstoss" iconography is quite specific to the German right-wing from 1918-1945. It does not show up to any significant degree before or afterwards (except as an echo of the German original.) If he has images which prove otherwise, let him provide them. In the meantime, the question still stands: if he resists so violently any association with National Socialism, why does he praise a cartoon which draws on iconography closely associated with them?
If Dean is against taking things out of context, why does he assign, via the cartoon, the antics of the "far left" to the entire Democratic party.
If all that upsets Dean is that "the left" is playing the "things aren't going perfect therefore you suck", why does he support a cartoon with violent imagery which claims much more: that the Democrats have the blood of US soldiers on their hands?
I am still waiting for those of you on the right to denounce this.
You call Saddam a bloodthirsty dictator - which is true. Yet you convenient conservatives seem to forget that the United States, during sainted Ronald Reagan's presidency, supported Iraq, re-establishing relations with Hussein's dictatorship even though Iraq was using mustard gas against Iranian troops as Rumsfeld was meeting with Tariq Aziz!
Yeah, it's all Clinton's fault. That dog don't hunt. Next?
Maddest of cold, mad props to Mr. Esmay for a sort of Greatest Hits of right-blogger rhetorical schemes right here in this very thread.
There's the "An attack on Indymedia is an attack on "The Left," because, as every ful kno, Indymedia is the Mother Russia of everyone who isn't "right."
There's the always popular "It's all Clinton's fault," an assertion, btw, that really deserves a more prominent place in the platform of the party of personal responsibility.
And no rhetorical outrage is complete without a sense of moral superiority. Denunciations and ex-leftist cred are the two must-have accessories this season. Demonstrate the moral rot of the left by saying bad things are bad first. Come in out of the cold and amaze everyone with your personal experience of the depths of the left's perfidy!
Extra, bi-partisan scheme: Assume your opponents are merely consumed with hate; on the principle of "What I tell you three times must be true," repeat your assertions frequently.
Ob topic, for what little I care: Does Mr. Esmay believe that the troops are being "stabbed in the back"? And if so, by whom?
Speaking as a "lefty", so to speak, I consider IndyMedia to be as representative of my point of view as Rush Limbaugh: both tend toward reflexive, low-thought jumps to conclusion and overblown rhetoric. Do I denounce a swastika armband placed on the shoulder of an American soldier? Yes, indeed. But then, because I rarely visit IndyMedia, it never blipped my radar. And, besides, swastikas are just the sort of cheap-shot imagery I'd expect from the dittoheads on my "side of the aisle." Funny then how, in attempting to defend American soldiers from low-brow potshots by fringe leftoids, Cerdipity managed to fall into well-established Nazi iconography.
If there is a God, she has a good sense of humor.
Seen den Beste's latest about how protestors should be shot (he wishes, but as a moral man does not act on the wish), about how they're endangering the rest of America, that they "hate America more than Osama" (as if Osama's in Iraq)? Going on about "love of country"? You knew he'd have to go for the dolchstoss thing before the month was out. What else have they got?
What's striking about this rhetoric is that it's from autumn 2001: the "former-left" gambit, the jeering against the "indymedia" crowd who "hate America more than Osama," the Sontag awards business. It's the rhetoric of triumph, when the right felt flushed with popular support and the anti-war protests *against Afghanistan* were small (and kinda indymediaish, actually, and their self-defense more philosophically troubled) than the later ones against Iraq (whose principles of refusal were different and more diverse and compelling).
For three years this particular kind of antileft rhetoric has been qualified and chastened, "gone underground," crept into sly code words, as things have become more complicated (ie spiralled out of control). Now... after Abu Ghraib! ...it's back again, and it's the time-travel triumphalism that makes it sound so unhinged. Now suddenly they're so flushed with triumph and moral victory that they can declare, again, that we're a fifth column who should be fired upon.
Tim Burke's recent essay at the History News Network is right: the response to Abu Ghraib is a genuine litmus test for the right. The ones who refuse to come to terms with it--the authoritarians, hardons and crazies--are mounting what is truly a fullscale denial. A huge chunk of them have simply veered off into pure tribalism and shown that their appeals to principle or strategic rationality were just window dressing all along.
It's Iran's Fault!
Ahmed Chalabi's recent fall from grace would ordinarily be cause for a wry smile of satisfaction from his critics, but in truth, such partisan schadenfreude has been muted by what might be called a certain Orwellian spidey sense. That...