The New! Improved! Turn towards Victory! … coming soon to a delusion near you
President Bush today called the formation of a new Iraqi government “a turning point,” after hearing from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld about their weekend meeting with that country’s prime minister designate.
Mr. Bush cautioned that “there’s going to be more tough days ahead,” but he said that “it’s important for the American people to know that we’ve got partners in this effort who are dedicated to a unified Iraq.”
Cool. Partners! And Raw Story introduces them:
Ahmed Chalabi, the man who helped provide cooked intelligence on Iraq to the Pentagon and the New York Times in the lead-up to war, is once again being engaged in US policy decisions, current and former intelligence officials say.
According to two former high level counterintelligence officials, one former senior counterterrorist official and another intelligence officer, Chalabi is acting as broker between the US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Iranian officials in what are now stalled diplomatic efforts between the US and Iran.
“[Ahmed] Chalabi inserted himself and brought a proposal to Zel,” one intelligence source said.
Intelligence officials say the proposal that Chalabi delivered asked both the US and Iran to focus diplomatic talks on the Iraqi insurgency, leaving all discussion of Iran’s nuclear program off the table. The talks, however, are now stalled.
It is unclear, however, who has tasked Chalabi to act as middleman or who he is representing in these attempts at negotiations.
“Either he is taking it upon himself or being asked to intervene,” one former senior counterintelligence official said. “What we know is that Chalabi has approached the US Ambassador to Iraq with a request from what appears to be the Iranian leadership to engage in talks.”
Asked what is motivating Chalabi to attempt talks between Iran and the United States, another former intelligence official put it simply: “He is close to Iran.”
This “closeness” to Iran could also be the reason the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon decided to re-employ Iran-Contra middleman and arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar. An earlier RAW STORY report revealed that Vice President Cheney and the Pentagon re-hired Ghorbanifar as “the man on the ground” in order to monitor any talks between the US ambassador and Iran.
Yes, Chalabi, and Ghorbanifar, the guy who said Osama is in Iran and Saddam was there, too, just before Saddam was captured in Iraq in December 2003. He also knew where Saddam’s WMDs were hidden and tied Saddam to Al Qaida; both have been disproven. And Oliver North says the guy came up with the idea of the illegal funding of Nicaraguan Contras, after Congress had forbidden funding from our treasury.
From Wikipedia:
In the 1980s, Ghorbanifar’s principal American contacts were National Security Council agents Oliver North and Michael Ledeen. Ghorbanifar also tried to get the US to support the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) opposition to the Khomeini government of Iran. Ledeen vouched for Ghorbanifar to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. Oliver North later claimed that Ghorbanifar had given him the idea for diverting profits from TOW and HAWK missile sales to Iran to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Ghorbanifar’s suspected duplicity during the Iran-Contra deal led CIA Director William Casey to order three separate lie-detector tests, all of which he failed. Iranian officials also suspected Ghorbanifar of passing them forged American documents. The CIA issued a burn notice (or “Fabricator Notice”) on Ghorbanifar in 1984, meaning he was regarded as an unreliable source of intelligence. A 1987 congressional report on Iran-Contra cites the CIA warning that Ghorbanifar “should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance”.
War on terrorism
In December 2001 Michael Ledeen organized a three-day meeting in Rome, Italy between Manucher Ghorbanifar and Defense Intelligence Agency officials Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode [1]. Also present were two officials from Italy’s SISMI. In addition to a position at the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen was working as a consultant to then U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who oversaw the Office of Special Plans. The 2001 meeting took place with the approval of then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. The meeting concerned a secret offer from reportedly dissident Iranian officials to provide information relevant to the War on Terrorism and Iran’s relationship with terrorists in Afghanistan.
Hadley? Bob Woodward says he was the guy who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to him, and he admittedly passed the yellowcake lie on to Bush.
Which he got from Sismi.
Who else does Cheney rely on?
The United States, while pushing for a longer sanctions list, lobbied quietly behind the scenes to ensure that one of Washington’s key sources on terrorism, Sudanese intelligence chief Salah Abdallah Gosh, stayed off the list.
Bill Scher passes on his background:
As Wesley Clark and John Prendergast explained in a Boston Globe op-ed:
Gosh was Osama bin Laden’s handler when the Al Qaeda leader lived in Sudan in the 1990s, and he is no doubt useful.
But Gosh is also very likely a war criminal whose policies are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Darfurians.
A lovely bunch of bananas, no?
And after all the effort the Cheney administration has put into cultivating information from proven liars, forgers and convicted embezzlers, they had a more reliable source they could have used, as Barbara O’Brien passes on:
“INTELLIGENCE SOURCES SAY VALERIE WILSON WAS PART OF AN OPERATION THREE YEARS AGO TRACKING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL INTO IRAN. AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON’S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION’S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN’S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL.”
Yes, Bush is happy to report we’re at a turning point in Iraq. But after turning the corner last December, and again in March 2005 and in January 2004, and several earlier ones, doesn’t that mean we’re turning around in circles?
The only thing Bush has learned is to stop saying ‘corner’, but he continues the ‘turning’ theme. So let’s go with it.
Bush has turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists, he’s turned its infrastructure and oil pumping capabilities into half of what it was, and he’s turned $1.40/gallon gas to $3.00/gas for us as a result.
His administration tried to turn the security of our nation’s ports over to Arab governments where Al Qaida funding came from. The GOP House of Reps is trying to turn 12 million immigrant workers in America into felons, but only the Latino ones, while turning their racism into a false security issue.
Bush and Cheney continue to turn to crooks and liars and murderers for his intelligence while turning away US intelligence agents and blowing their cover, which, if not treasonous, certainly damages our nation’s security.
Every Iraq leader that has emerged under US pressure to create a democracy is touted as the next great solution, though it looks to Iraqis that they’ve turned Iraq into a puppetocracy, with each new leader selected by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice Big Oil Quartet, not Iraqis.
The reality can turn your stomach. And as they turn, turn, turn faster and faster, all they really are accomplishing is pure spin.
They could have turned to wiser heads, but the truth is, they weren’t interested in wisdom or truth - or democracy - at all. It turns out it really was all about the oil… at any price… so long as they’re not the ones paying it.
