Forever And Ever Ahmad
Yeah, right. Nobody knows nothing. Rummy says the press should talk to “the Iraqis,” because he has no idea what’s going on with his erstwhile good friend Chalabi.
There’s no need to reiterate everything that’s wrong with that crook Ahmad, but it should be remembered that Cheney himself approved Rummy’s plan to airlift Chalabi into the country a year ago, after Bush had explictly promised Tony Blair that it would not happen. As ye sow and all that crap…
It’s sad that Rummy’s lost touch with the fortunes of his former friend because he was once one of his strongest supporters. Those were the days.
I’ve read the various theories about what is really going on with this, and I have no opinion other than that the official explanation seems fairly believable to me. Not that Chalabi has a history of bank fraud or anything like that, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that he might have been taking just a little taste for himself after all the years of dining on bad hors d’ouvres in Georgetown salons for the good of the cause:
For several months, U.S. officials have been investigating people affiliated with the INC for possible ties to a scheme to defraud the Iraqi government during the transition to a new currency that took place from Oct. 15 last year to Jan. 15, according to a U.S. occupation authority official familiar with the case. The official said the raids were partly related to that investigation.
At the center of the inquiry is Nouri, whom Chalabi picked as the top anti-corruption official in the new Iraqi Finance Ministry. Chalabi heads the Governing Council’s finance committee, and has major influence in its staffing and operation.
When auditors early this year began counting the old Iraqi dinars brought in and the new Iraqi dinars given out in return, they discovered a shortfall of more than $22 million. Nouri, a German national, was arrested in April and faces 17 charges including extortion, fraud, embezzlement, theft of government property and abuse of authority. He is being held in a maximum security facility, according to three sources close to the investigation.
In recent weeks, several other Finance Ministry officials have been arrested as part of the investigation. A U.S. official familiar with the case said, “We are cracking down on corruption regardless of names involved.”
I won’t be surprised if there is more to it. Why, there might even be more embezzlement involved:
BLITZER: They found hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. $100 bills. They found other money. How much money do you suspect is still available to finance this insurgency?
CHALABI: There are hundreds of millions of dollars still unaccounted for from Saddam’s loot that he took from the Central Bank of Iraq. He looted the Central Bank. I have the records. He took $920 million in U.S. dollars, cash $100 bills, and he took $90 million euro from — that’s about $100 million now from the Central Bank of Iraq on the 19th of March. He sent a letter signed by him ordering the Central Bank government to give the money to his son from the account of the presidency.
This may be the largest cash withdrawal in history. He took all of this money, put it — it was already packed in crates of $4 million each, and it took three trucks to load the money in, and he took it. Most of that money is unaccounted for.
According to this post by The Angry Bear, Chalabi says he doesn’t need any more money.
Uhm Hmm. Imagine that.
Update: On the other hand —
Senior U.S. officials told 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl that they have evidence Chalabi has been passing highly-classified U.S. intelligence to Iran.
The evidence shows that Chalabi personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, “get Americans killed.” The evidence is said to be “rock solid.”
Sources have told Stahl a high-level investigation is underway into who in the U.S. government gave Chalabi such sensitive information in the first place.
There is only one degree of separation between Chalabi and the deputy secretary of defense.