Byzantine Intrigues in The Chalabi Case

We are supposed to believe that international crook and would-be king of Iraq Ahmed Chalabi is an Iranian spy, who duped all the neocons into war for Iran's benefit and later sold out the secret that NSA broke Iran's secret code.

This storyline stinks to heaven.

First, Chalabi has his own ambitions, namely to lead Iraq, thus his contacts with Iran are of the same quality as that with the USA. Second, the neocons needed no duping into war: it is fairly well established that WMDs were an excuse to start a war out of geopolitical motivations (Middle East reorganisation, control of own oil sources, control of Europe's and East Asia's oil sources, military bases, Israel's security, power demonstration, testing reformed military etc. - of course, for each Bush admin player a different subset of the previous). Third, to critical observers it was fairly obvious before the war that WMD claims are fishy, and that government response to this criticism was always hot on rhetoric and weak on sound arguments - and after the war, we learnt that there was critical analysis even within the government, but it was sidelined. Fourth, all this is just all too convenient for a vengeful CIA and State Department.

Fifth, the reported details of Chalabi's indiscretion and its discovery just don't add up.

The leakers' claim is that the Iranian intel officer doubted Chalabi's info, thats why he used the same code, but just in case included false info on a weapons storage, action on which would have proved Chalabi's claim, but the Americans didn't fall for the false info.

Now which intel officer would express doubts, name the source rather than use a code name, and include fake info in the same message? And how did the Americans deduce what was the false info? They don't tell us. And anyway, didn't going after Chalabi prove the code claim true? I'm afraid to say Perle's reasoning is more sound here, namely that implicating Chalabi was the fake info.

So New York Times again proved itself to be an uncritical repeater of government spin - nothing new under the media sun, part MCMXXVIII.

But, I repeat, the good thing about this charade is that while it brings down the neocons, it also brings down the attacking Republican paleohawks, as it leads to election loss.

*****

There is a further issue here: think the neocon way!

Neocons view themselves as great analysts, strategic thinkers, chess players on a grand scale. For them, Iran-Contra was not treason or a reckless dirty deal, but a wise tactical sacrifice for strategic gain (a somewhat better armed Iran for the possible overthrow of the only far-leftist government in Central America).

Whatever deals Chalabi truly had with Iran (and he certainly had some), those would be a fair price in neocon eyes for getting Iran to tolerate (rather than plot to undermine) their puppet in the neighbourhood.

And what's the importance, after all, they planned to overthrow Iran anyway!