> that is, it's ok that he's a manipulative liar since no one was actually
> manipulated by him and even if they were they were only manipulated into
> doing the right thing, anyway.
I agree that no one was manipulated by him: they wanted to go to war regardless as to what Chalabi said. Although, obviously, I disagree that it was "right." This is what Kenneth Pollak wrote about Chalabi in _The Threatening Storm_. Further below is a defense of Chalabi against Pollak et al's criticism of Chalabi in a Foreign Affairs essay, "Can Saddam Be Toppled?"
Bush 1 and regime change. In addition to cultivating the Irqi National Acord (INA) group, "the CIA pursued other approaches as well. ...during the summer of 1991, Langley had reached out to an Iraqi exile named Ahmed Chalabi, a former banker, to serve as the coordinator of an effort to create a more cohesive and effective external opposition una single umbrella organization. But all the opposition groups were weak and fractious, and Chalabi had been chosen because he was wealthy and had good organizational skills, _and_ because he had no base of support inside Iraq nor any standing with any of the exile groups. IN the words of one US official, Chalabi "was acceptable as an office manager," which is all he was supposed to be. They thought he would be easily controlled and, because he was a 'tabula rasa,' would not provoke objections from any of the more established groups.
...
"In early March 1995, part of the covert action program got out of hand. With the encouragement and assistance of several CIA officers,Wafiq Samarra'i, both Kurdish militias, and Chalabi's INC cooked up a scheme to try to topple Saddam. <... he goes on to explain that the mission failed --Newsweek called it 'Bay of Pigs Redux' ...>
The Kurds, Chalibi's INC, and their CIA minders had greatly exceeded their brief and launched an operation that almost certainly would have resulted in disaster had they not stopped when they did."
Pollack went on to publish an article in the journal Foreign Affairs arguing that "the pet idea of several important Republicans--creating a small army under the leadership of Chalabi's INC and then trying to use it to overthrow Saddam--was badly misguided and would likely result in disaster."
This brought him to Sandy Berger's attention where he was asked to help develop regime change efforts that didn't rely on Chalabi and the INC.
"The Agency wanted nothing to do with the Iraqi National Congress after having watched it fail to generate any significant support after four years inside Iraq couple with some unpleased experience with Ahmed Chalabi...."
"Over time, Chalabi came to believe he could be something more than the 'office manager' .... By 1997-98, Chalabi wanted to head a consolidated opposition and adopted somewhat ruthless methods to try to bend other groups to his will. Increasingly, Chalabi developed a network of supporters among the right wing of the Republican Party and used these powerful friends to wage an internal war within the IRaqi diaspora for control of the opposition. Many Iraqi oppositionist found this galling since Chalabi did no "bring anything to the table" other than his friends in the US Congress. Chalabi's ...militarily ludicrous scheme to train 5-10k INC fighters (describes the stupid idea from a man who couldn't get anyone to join up 1992-1996). The result was the fragmentation of the INC... (the various groups subsubmed under its banner) all told the Clinton administration that they would remain part of the INC in name but refused to take orders from Ahmed Chalabi."
Describing Chalabi's effort to undercut a supporter, Frank Ricciardone, because Ricciardone wasn't willing to give Chalabi and the INC the role they really wanted to play (nor would MArtin Indyk and Pollack), Chalabi and his faction were eventually seen by administration officials as untrustworthy, "a dog determined to bite the ahnd that was feeding it."
[so, you can see the roots of the CIA/Pentagon split....]
Liberate Iraq Reuel Marc Gerecht The Weekly Standard May 14, 2001 <...>
(I snipped a lot so it wouldn't bounce.)
In January 1999, Foreign Affairs published a high-profile attack on the INC, "Can Saddam Be Toppled?" by Daniel Byman, Kenneth Pollack, and Gideon Rose. It left the impression that Ahmad Chalabi is definitely not the man to lead the opposition, let alone the nation, out of the totalitarian abyss, portraying him as an ineffectual leader, devoid of the eminence necessary to draw disparate Iraqis together. Yet Chalabi may be ideal for the task, for the very reasons that often cause critics to trash him. He is rich, upper class (in the old-world sense), well educated, highly Westernized, an expatriate, and, last but not least, a Shi'ite Arab.
Sunni Arabs are very much an Iraqi minority. They represent no more than 30 percent of the population, probably closer to 20 percent. Shi'ite Arabs are at least 60 percent of the people, perhaps even 70 percent. (Sunni Kurds are the majority of what is left.) The Iraqi army, too, is majority Shi'ite. The officer corps probably isn't; the elite units certainly are not.
Yet this perspective is relevant only if one is trying to instigate a coup within Saddam's inner circle. But a coup against Saddam is an addle-headed idea, as the men involved in the CIA-engineered Iraqi National Accord coup attempt could testify, if they were still alive. Coups against totalitarian regimes can't work. Even if Saddam were to fall to an assassin's bullet or a praetorian insurrection, he would only be succeeded by a Ba'athi Himmler or Goring.
If Iraq is ever to escape its vicious past, its politics must start to reflect the mosaic of its people. Continued Sunni Arab dominance of government is a recipe for Lebanese-style disaster. The Sunni Arab community needs to know that the Shi'ites are not going to massacre them for their privileges within the Ba'athi system -- this is an article of faith with Chalabi, who has a profound understanding of Iraq's messy history -- but they must also know that the Sunni Arab power structure, as it exists under Saddam Hussein, will end.
This might not be as convulsive as it sounds. Sunni Arabs have suffered horribly under Saddam's reign of terror. For years, their women too have been raped. Chalabi, because he is an outsider and a member of an old, prominent family that reaches back before Iraq descended into its Ba'athi nightmare, can appeal to the nostalgia one senses throughout the Arab world for a time when civilized men did not slaughter each other.
<...> <lurch moan>
We don't know for sure how good a national leader Chalabi would be. An observant Muslim, he has the old patrician Arab ability to speak across perhaps the most important socio-religious dividing line -- between traditionalists and moderns. But we can't finally assess Chalabi's gravitas until the White House backs him on the battlefield, in Congress, and before Washington's foreign-affairs, defense, and intelligence bureaucracies.
Anyone who has met him knows that Chalabi has presence, but the critical factor for his leadership would be America's support. Once Chalabi was chosen by us, everyone else -- the Kurds, the Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs, the Turks, Iranians, Kuwaitis, and Saudis -- would view him in an entirely new light. It is astonishing that Byman, Pollack, and Rose, and those who echo their views in the U.S. government, favor trolling for new leadership among the many factions of the Iraqi opposition -- in effect, turning the principle of divide and conquer against us. Their assertion that Chalabi has been a feckless leader of the opposition is bizarre given the Clinton administration's unflagging efforts to undermine him. Ever since August 1996, when national security adviser Anthony Lake surreally declared Saddam Hussein's rout of the U.S.-supported INC to be irrelevant to America's position in the Middle East, besmirching Chalabi, who refused to go quietly, has been a logical necessity. <...>
Chalabi also established his own intelligence service, which dwarfed the reach and understanding of the CIA's clandestine service. One of the principal reasons the clandestine service's Near East Division loathes Chalabi is that he tried to warn Langley that its coup d'etat plans with the Iraqi National Accord -- an opposition group that supposedly had cells within elite units of the Iraqi Army -- had been thoroughly penetrated by Saddam. The INC, which wasn't supposed to be privy to the existence of the coup attempt, detailed quite accurately the trap Saddam was springing. The notorious "Bob," an intrepid, talented CIA case officer stationed in northern Iraq, believed the INC's information and tried to warn headquarters to begin immediately testing its INA assets for doubles. Langley refused. When Saddam tore the INA scheme apart, Chalabi became one of Langley's least favorite people.
<...> Anonymous U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers have repeatedly labeled Chalabi via the press as corrupt, suggesting that he cares more about personal profit than anything else. A banker in Jordan in the 1970s, Chalabi is rumored to have stolen millions from his Petra bank. The rumors are probably unfounded, the product of Chalabi's being on the losing side in Hashemite-Jordanian-Palestinian financial squabbles. He made enemies among influential Jordanians closely tied to Palestinian banking circles, which have a near monopoly over Jordan's commerce.
But even if the rumors are true, so what? Chalabi hasn't been trying for the last eight years to become the CEO of KPMG. He hasn't watched friends die because money is the center of his life. If Chalabi weren't rich, he couldn't devote so much time and money to the fight against Saddam Hussein. One would think that George Tenet's CIA, which has probably been at the root of most of the attacks on Chalabi, would know well that good, even noble, men can take money. In the Middle East, there are much deadlier sins than greed. <...>
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20010514.htm
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--The Sopranos