The Iraqi exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi — formerly a key ally of the Bush administration — is suspected of leaking confidential information about U.S. war plans for Iraq to the government of Iran before last year’s invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, government sources told NEWSWEEK
Somebody’s got a problem.
The article doesn’t go into any further detail on that, but it does feature a bunch of neocons (called here “political activists” which cracks me up) in high dudgeon screaming about “witch hunts.”
People might be able to chalk up all this espionage, treason type talk as partisanship or business as usual in the nation’s capital, except it’s got nothing to do with the Democrats!! This is a Republican show all the way and all we have to do is bring the popcorn.
Oh, and by the way:
President Bush also distanced himself from Chalabi, saying he had only met the Iraqi very briefly a few times.
Who is this Chalabi you speak of?
If that’s on camera, it would make a nice video companion to his notorious “I believe I met Mr Lay when he was working for my opponent.”
And I think the more pertinent question is how many times did President Cheney meet with Mr Chalabi, anyway.
Josh Marshall points out the ultimate paragraph of this piece which is a real killer:
One Bush administration official said that in addition to harboring suspicions that Chalabi had been leaking sensitive U.S. information to Iran both before and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, some U.S. officials also believe that Chalabi had collected and maintained files of potentially damaging information on U.S. officials with whom he had or was going to interact for the purpose of influencing them. Some officials said that when Iraqi authorities raided Chalabi’s offices, one of the things American officials hoped they would look for was Chalabi’s cache of information he had gathered on Americans.
I’m having milk duds too. This is going to be good.
Update:
Via Atrios, the actual Bush comments from yesterday:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader that’s fallen out of favor within your administration. I’m wondering if you feel that he provided any false information, or are you particularly —
THE PRESIDENT: Chalabi?
Q Yes, with Chalabi.
THE PRESIDENT: My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven’t had any extensive conversations with him.
…Q I guess I’m asking, do you feel like he misled your administration, in terms of what the expectations were going to be going into Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t remember anybody walking into my office saying, Chalabi says this is the way it’s going to be in Iraq.
If you haven’t already seen it, go read the patented Eschaton takedown of this obvious lie.