In a post over at the evangelical outpost [1], Joe Carter does a pretty fair job of bringing to light some of the UNSCAM abuses, but introduces a new source of scam… Chalabi. Apparently Chalabi himself was covering evidence in the UNSCAM investigation. If so, seems to me the actions of both shutting off his funding, and raiding his office and home were spot on. And note, please that (bold) it wasn’t a US action but a Iraqi governing council action, which makes it a substantially different matter.
“In a blog article posted just a few days ago, Thomas Lifson from the American Thinker asks, ?Why is the United States shutting down Chalabi?s already-established investigation? The NY Post also chimed in and claimed that Bremer was impeding the investigation and should allow Chalabi’s audit continue.
While the idea of a “cover-up” by the Bush Administration was being tossed around, a more interesting reason for freezing out Chalabi came to light. On May 20th, his house was raided by the Iraqi Governing Council as part of a corruption investigation initiated by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. Chalabi, a secular Shiite Arab and former banker who left Iraq for exile after a left-wing coup in 1958, was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 for allegedly embezzling over $1 billion from a bank he ran and sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has repeatedly denied the charges.
A senior Bush administration official has said that there is “rock solid” evidence that Chalabi passed secrets to Iran. He had previously called for closer ties between Iran and Iraq. ”
There’s much in the way of tea-leaf reading going on around Chalabi at the moment, and much in the way of leftists patting themselves on the back for never having trusted him, and chiding the Bush administration for having done so.
But on what evidence do we assume that the Bush administration EVER fully trusted him? Public statements and posturing? Sorry, I don’t see that as proof, given the cat and mouse game being played here more levels than this, in that part of the world.
Looking back down this timeline, with this new information in hand, it’s starting to sound possible that Chalabi, always a fairly popular person among a few factions in Iraq, was given enough rope to hang himself with, in front of his own countrymen, and is now being dealt with by an enraged Iraqi governing council, not the US. (You may recall, unilateral US action there is supposed to be a no-no in some circles…. And in this case, I’ll more than grant that the IGC dealing with this matter is a decided plus, wouldn’t you?)
In short, it’s my take we knew he had problems and allowed him to expose himself to his own people as such, thus allowing them to take the proper actions with him. If this tea-leaf reading of mine is correct, this is a deft bit of international relationship management that should be in the textbooks going forward.
I can hear the disbelieving snorts of derision form the leftists as they read this. But, time will tell. In every instance over the last few years, Mr. Bush has been outperforming leftist expectations. At what point do you start giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, and assume he’s got more info to work with than you, and more brains than you’ve been giving him credit for?