Hi
Here is an article about efforts to democratize Iraq. Michael will
particularly enjoy the article, as it is written by his favorite gril
friend, Maureen Dowd:
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OP-ED COLUMNIST
Swindler on a Gusher
By Maureen Dowd
Published: April 30, 2005 by NY Times
WASHINGTON
The Iraqis have thrown us another curveball.
Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy,
double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating
intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister.
Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set
the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher?
Does anybody still think the path to war wasn't greased by oil?
The neocons' con man had been paid millions by the U.S. to tell the
Bushies what they wanted to hear on Iraqi W.M.D. A year ago, the State
Department and factions in the Pentagon turned on him after he began
bashing America and using Saddam's secret files to discredit his enemies.
Right after the invasion, the charlatan was escorted into Iraq by U.S.
troops and cultivated an axis of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians. He got
a fancy house with layers of armed guards and pulled-down shades, and
began helping himself to Iraqi assets. The U.S. occupation sicced the
Iraqi police on his headquarters only after an Iraqi judge ordered thugs
in the Chalabi posse arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, torture and theft.
Newsweek revealed that the U.S. suspected Mr. Chalabi of leaking secret
information about American war plans for Iraq to the Iranians before the
invasion, and of perhaps leaking "highly classified" information to Iran
that could "get people killed" if abused by the Iranians. Mr. Chalabi
claimed the Iranians set him up.
In August of last year, while he was at a cabin in the Iranian
mountains, the Iraqis ordered him arrested on counterfeiting charges,
which were later dropped for lack of evidence.
Now, showing survival skills that make Tom DeLay look like a piker, the
resourceful Thief of Baghdad has popped back up as one of the four
deputy prime ministers and the interim cabinet minister controlling the
one valuable commodity in that wasteland: the second-largest oil
reserves after Saudi Arabia. He even has a DeLay-like talent for getting
relatives on the payroll: a Chalabi nephew is the new finance minister.
Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, told Reuters that many Iraqis would
consider the plum oil job for Mr. Chalabi "putting a fox in charge of
the henhouse." The choice, he added, "is going to make it extremely easy
for people to make charges about corruption."
Oil isn't on the front burner only in Iraq. Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney
know that time is running out to pay back the Texas buddies who sent
them here with an energy bill. So those two oilmen are frantically
pushing one loaded with giveaways to the oil industry at a time when
it's already raking in huge profits because of high gasoline prices.
In Baghdad, we may wind up with a one-man Enron - never underestimate
the snaky charmer. And the draconian efforts of Mr. Chalabi and other
Shiites in power to purge Baathists from the government will breathe
fire into the insurgency.
Mr. Bush wanted Iraq to have a democracy like ours. It's on its way,
nearing an ethics-free zone where a corrupt official can hold sway and a
theocracy can curb women's rights.
Another big winner in the new Iraqi cabinet is Moktada al-Sadr, the
Shiite cleric who scurried away like a rat across the desert after he
led two armed uprisings and caused a lot of American and Iraqi troops to
die. His political movement got three ministries - health,
transportation and civil society - and Sadr allies will try to give the
scofflaw cleric legal protections so he can slink back into a leadership
role.
Ayad Allawi, the Shiite who was supposed to keep the government secular
and bring in Sunnis to blunt the insurgency, has been marginalized. That
leaves the government to be ruled by men rooted in the sort of
conservative Shiite religious politics that will not produce a new dawn
of equality for Iraqi women.
The new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is a devout Shiite from the
Dawa Party. As John Burns wrote in The Times yesterday
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/international/middleeast/29baghdad.html>,
the Dawa Party was "fiercely anti-American during their exile years
under Mr. Hussein, and Dawa was implicated by American intelligence in
terrorist acts across the Middle East, including a 1983 bombing of the
American Embassy in Kuwait."
The bad news: This is not an Iraqi government that will practice
Athenian democracy or end the insurgency. The other bad news: If Dr.
Jaafari falls, Ahmad Chalabi will be there to pick up the pieces.
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Regards,
LelandJ
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©2005 Leland Jackson |
