THE CHALABI SMEAR
David Frum - NRO
Really, if the CIA and State Department fought this country’s enemies with even one-half the ferocity with which they have waged war on Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, the United States would be a vastly safer place. Yesterday, the agencies launched their latest offensive against this leader they so detest: They leaked Mark Hosenball of Newsweek a story claiming that Chalabi has betrayed US interests to the Iranians.
“U.S. intelligence agencies have recently raised concerns that Chalabi has become too close to Iran's theocratic rulers. NEWSWEEK has learned that top Bush administration officials have been briefed on intelligence indicating that Chalabi and some of his top aides have supplied Iran with ‘sensitive’ information on the American occupation in Iraq. U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq. There are also indications that Chalabi has provided details of U.S. security operations. According to one U.S. government source, some of the information Chalabi turned over to Iran could ‘get people killed.’ (A Chalabi aide calls the allegations ‘absolutely false.’)”
You have to give credit where credit is due: This is an audacious accusation. Audacious because it demands that the State Department’s and CIA’s cheering sections in the media perform a cult-like reversal of belief in everything they were saying about Iraq, Iran, and Chalabi himself up until now.
But those of us with memories that extend back beyond the past 24 hours will have some questions for Newsweek and its sources:
ITEM: Up until now we were supposed to believe that the INC produced no useful intelligence – that it dealt only in fantasies and lies. Now suddenly the INC is accused of being in possession of accurate and valuable sensitive information. How did Chalabi go from know-nothing to valuable intelligence asset overnight?
ITEM: A government source says that the security information Chalabi may or may not have provided could “get people killed.” Get them killed by whom? Up until now, the CIA and State Department have resolutely refused to acknowledge that Iran might be supporting the insurgency in Iraq. Now they are willing to admit reality – but only in order to use it against what they perceive as the real threat: Chalabi.
ITEM: Chalabi has been caught talking on the phone to the Iranians. But wait – hasn’t the State Department been arguing for months that the US should talk to the Iranians about Iraq? In testimony to Congress in October 2003, State number 2 Richard Armitage explicitly disavowed regime change in Iran and called for discussions with Iran on “appropriate” issues. In January 2004, Secretary of State Powell openly called for “dialogue” – and the Bush administration offered to send Elizabeth Dole and a member of the president’s own family to deliver earthquake aid to Iran. (The British sent Prince Charles.) Since then, the hinting and suggesting have grown ever more explicit. What, pray, is the difference between the policy Chalabi is pursuing and that which his State Department critics want the US to pursue?
ITEM: Chalabi is now accused of playing a “double game” in Iraqi politics, an offense for which he must forfeit all rights to a role in Iraq’s future. This “no double game” rule is a new and impressive standard for judging our allies in the Arab Middle East. Question: Will that same standard apply to those former Republican Guard generals whom the State Department is now so assiduously promoting? Will it apply to the former Baathists that Lakhdar Brahimi wishes to include in the provisional Iraqi government? Will it apply to Lakhdar Brahimi himself? Will it apply to the Saudi royal family? Will it apply to the Iranians? Or is it only Ahmed Chalabi who must swear undeviating loyalty to the US policy-of-the-day in Iraq?
ITEM: Salon magazine last night published a lengthy attack on Chalabi by John Dizard. In it, former Chalabi business partner Marc Zell calls Chalabi a “treacherous, spineless turncoat,” for failing to deliver on Chalabi’s alleged promises to open Iraq to trade with Israel. I don’t know that these promises were ever made – and if made, I wonder whether Chalabi ever suggested that they would rank first on a new Iraqi government’s list of priorities. But never mind that: Chalabi has not exercised executive power in Iraq for even a single day. How exactly was it ever possible that he would carry out any promise about anything to anyone?
Ahmed Chalabi no doubt has many faults. I have never been easy in my mind about the collapse of the bank he ran in Jordan back in 1989. (Although the charges that Chalabi himself stole money from the bank are not very convincing either.) But I do know this: Chalabi is one of the very few genuine liberal democrats to be found at the head of any substantial political organization anywhere in the Arab world. He is not consumed by paranoid fantasies, he understands and admires the American system, and he is willing to work with the United States if the United States will work with him. He risked his life through the 1990s to topple Saddam Hussein, which is more than can be said about any of State's or CIA's preferred candidates for power in Iraq. Compared to anybody other possible leader of Iraq – compared to just about every other political leader in the Arab world – the imperfect Ahmed Chalabi is nonetheless a James bleeping Madison.
And maybe that’s exactly why he is so very unpopular with so many of the local thugs and tyrants who unfortunately command the attention of America’s spies and diplomats.
10:21 AM
MAY. 3, 2004: PAYBACK TIME
Read, if you haven’t already, Barbara Lerner’s important piece in last week’s NRO. Lerner is indispensable to understanding the string of troubles that have hit the US in Iraq over the past few days, from the stalemate in Fallujah to the photos of abused Iraqi prisoners that have so badly damaged America’s image in the Arab and Muslim world. At bottom, the US government seems paralyzed between two contradictory approaches to the reconstruction of the country.
Approach number one is advocated by the US State Department, the British Foreign Office, much of the uniformed military – and most of the best-known foreign policy pundits. According to this view, Iraq is an impossibly unstable country that can only be held together by authoritarian methods. Again according to this view, the most important group in the country is the Sunni Arab minority: They are only 20% of the population, but they have the largest sense of what they are entitled to and the greatest potential to make trouble. And the trouble they can make is region-wide: Sunni Arabs may be a minority in Iraq, but they are a majority in the Near East/North Africa region as a whole – and the fate of the Sunni Arabs in Iraq excites Sunni Arab opinion from Morocco to Saudi Arabia.
Advocates of approach number one may concede that Saddam Hussein went too far, both in his authoritarianism and in his persecution of Iraq’s non-Sunni non-Arab population. But the basics of his rule have to be retained. That’s why you hear so much complaining in the press about “de-Baathification” and the disbanding of the Iraqi army – the Baath party and the army were the fundamentals of Sunni Arab dominance in Iraq. That’s why you hear so much scorn for democratization and Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress – indeed this very week another round of anti-Chalabi stories are being spread through Washington. That’s why there is so much pressure to rehabilitate old associates of Saddam’s, including the Republican Guard general who may or may not be leading the counter-insurgency in Fallujah.
There’s a lot wrong with this approach, as Bob Kagan effectively argues in yesterday’s Washington Post - and not least that it enflames paranoia about American intentions. The abuse photographs would have inflicted a terrible propaganda defeat in the US in any case. But this week! To see images of Americans abusing Iraqis inside Saddam Hussein’s old prison appear at almost exactly the same time as (some) Americans are promoting Saddam’s former generals – well, it raises suspicions. And the Iraqis were suspicious to begin with.
That brings us to approach two. This is the approach advocated by the Vice President’s Office and the civilian leadership of the Defense Department. It is the approach that has been denounced as “neoconservatism,” “Wilsonianism,” and generally impractical. This approach argues that the old methods in Iraq and throughout the Middle East incubated the terrorism that threatens us now. It argues that we needed to bring real transforms the region – before the region transforms the world. (See for example this typically brilliant essay by Mark Steyn in last week’s Spectator. Steyn asks: If Muslims are thought to be incapable of democracy, what does that portend for democracy in Europe, where Muslims form an increasingly important and active minority?)
For that reason, the “neocons” argued, it was essential that there be from the very start an Iraqi face to the liberation of Iraq: Iraqi soldiers fighting alongside American, an Iraqi provisional government. But that would mean a role for Shiites and Kurds –and it would mean upsetting the Saudis. A detail from the Woodward book that rings true: The Saudis from the very start conditioned their support for the Iraq campaign on a promise that their interests would be consulted in the new Iraq. And so it has been. While the democratizers won most arguments over the war, the traditionalists have won most of the arguments over the postwar.
Unfortunately, Saudi interests and American interests do not coincide. And now we are seeing the consequences.
07:41 AM
APR. 29, 2004: PRIME MINISTER MARTIN'S VISIT
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin will meet with President Bush Friday, the culmination of a grand introductory two-day visit to Washington. For Martin, the visit must be a very poignant one. It was arranged soon after Martin took office, back when he seemed certain to win the next Canadian election in a landslide – back when his only political problem seemed to be the relatively easy one of restoring the friendly, easy Canada-US relationship so badly damaged by Martin’s boorish and intransigent predecessor, Jean Chretien.
But things change fast in politics!
Almost as soon as Chretien left town, Canada’s Auditor-General discovered and revealed that Chretien had presided over a vast and costly system of political slush funds and crony contracts. As much as $100 million was directed to friends of the Chretien government in the province of Quebec. Quebeckers were shamed; non-Quebeckers outraged – and Martin was immediately placed in a dangerous position. He had been the most powerful member of the Chretien government. By the late 1990s, he had achieved effective control of the Liberal party apparatus. He knew where every MP stood, knew every local constituency association. He was not only a Quebecker himself, but minister of finance for most of the period since 1993. Was it credible that he had been serenely unaware? Was it conceivable?
Of course it was not. Since the scandal broke in February, Martin’s standing has collapsed. The latest polls put the Liberals very nearly even with the newly reconstituted Conservative Party of Canada. Martin’s own personal favorable/unfavorable numbers are disintegrating.
This is the background to Martin’s agonizing dilemma. The Liberals are an uneasy alliance of leftish and centrist voters. And the voters who seem to be deserting them right now are the lefties: Canada’s two left-of-center parties, the English-speaking New Democratic Party and the francophone Bloc Quebecois, are enjoying a startling surge of support – to near record levels in the case of the NDP. And the NDP and the Bloc are virulently anti-American. To stanch the bleeding, Martin – who won power as the man who could repair Chretien’s anti-Americanism – must now try to avoid over-identification with the United States. The visit that was originally planned as a love-in will now feature all the friendliness and warmth of a Puritan funeral.
But while Martin works to avoid trouble at home, he will be storing up for himself new trouble in DC.
George W. Bush is an extremely shrewd reader of character. I strongly suspect that within minutes of his meeting with Martin, he will have sussed out Martin’s secret: Which is that Martin, though in many ways a very shrewd politician, is in his innermost core a very weak man. Martin dreads decisions, is terrified of ever taking a clear position on anything.
First in his campaign for the prime ministership – and, amazingly, in the six months that have passed since he became prime minister – Martin has achieved a near-perfect record of avoidance of any stance on any issue whatsoever. He has introduced no significant legislation in parliament and delivered a series of speeches remarkable for the nearly perfect purity of their lack of content.
See for example the speech he gave yesterday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. To adapt H.L. Mencken’s words: It drags itself out of the dark abyss of namby and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of pamby.
Listen, for example, to this triumph of evasiveness:
“What is required is an open discussion about the need for intervention in situations that offend the most basic precepts of our common humanity.” Yes indeed: Open discussion: just the thing to prevent crimes against humanity.
Earlier this week, the Martin government released a new National Security strategy for Canada. The strategy does indeed include many sound elements. But it is shot through with the same weakness of spirit that disfigures Martin’s Woodrow Wilson speech. Canada has already created its own counterpart to the Department of Homeland Security. Now it will be creating an equivalent to the National Security Council. It promises tougher measures on refugees, on defense spending, and on intelligence. All to the good.
Yet at the same time, it says that these measures will be subject to the supervision of a new “Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security.” The Roundtable “”will be comprised of [sic] members of ethno-cultural and religious communities from across Canada. It will engage in a long-term dialogue to improve understanding on how to manage security interests in a diverse society and will provide advice to promote the protection of civil order, mutual respect and common understanding.”
What this seems to imply is that leaders of the very communities in which extremism and terrorism have been acute problems – notably the Canadian Islamic communities, but also the Tamil community and others – will be invited to second-guess the judgments of the police and intelligence services.
This is a real problem.
Even relatively or ostensibly moderate Canadian Islamic groups have opposed almost all the steps taken to date to enhance Canada’s anti-terror enforcement. The Canadian Islamic Congress for example opposed legislation to suppress terrorist financing. In November 2001, Canada passed new anti-terrorism legislation that extended the definition of “terrorism” under Canadian law to groups that knowingly (repeat knowingly) support, fund, or shelter terrorists. The CIC’s response: “There isn't a single right in the Charter of Rights that this bill doesn't defecate on," said Rocco Galati, a Toronto lawyer representing the Canadian Islamic Congress in its submissions to the Justice Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-36. "It's written our rights right off the landscape.”
You’d think that people who regard the knowing funding of terrorism as a fundamental “right” would be the very last people who ought to be invited to supervise the fight against terror. You’d think so – but prime minister Martin doesn’t. Maybe someday should ask him about that during his visit to Washington.
11:24 PM
APR. 29, 2004: THE CCD BRIEF
The excellent Hamdi brief by Citizens for the Common Defence is now online. One point from the brief deserves special underlining: If the pro-Hamdi forces were to prevail, then the US government would be obliged to provide a lawyer to any US citizen captured in arms in the war on terror. The very first consequence of this would be that all captured enemy combatants would immediately claim to be US citizens at the moment they were captured – forcing the US army to carry with it to war some kind of national registry so that it could quickly tell which captured terrorists were telling the truth and which were lying.
A good follow up to the brief is Heather Mac Donald's superb article in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal about the way that arguments about privacy are being distorted so as to cripple the war on terror. Some excerpts:
"Had a system been in place in 2001 for rapidly accessing commercial and government data, the FBI’s intelligence investigators could have located every single one of the 9/11 team once it learned in August 2001 that al-Qaida operatives Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq al-Hazmi, two of the 9/11 suicide pilots, were in the country. By using a process known as link analysis (simpler than data mining), investigators would have come up with the following picture: al-Midhar’s and al-Hazmi’s San Diego addresses were listed in the phone book under their own names, and they had shared those addresses with Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi (who flew United 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center). A fifth hijacker, Majed Moqed, shared a frequent-flier number with al-Midhar. Five other hijackers used the same phone number Atta had used to book his flight reservations to book theirs. The rest of the hijackers (who crashed in Pennsylvania) could have been tracked down from addresses and phones shared with hijacker Ahmed Alghamdi, a visa violator—had the INS bothered to locate him before the flight by running his name on its overstayer watch list."
"It’s okay for Home Depot to buy my digitized credit-card receipts, says the privacy “community,” to see whether I would be a soft touch for a riding mower. But if government agents want to see who has purchased explosive-level quantities of fertilizer, they should go store to store, checking credit-card receipts. Data-mining opponents would deny terror investigators a technology in common use in the commercial sector, simply because they think government should be kept inefficient to limit its power, a Luddite’s approach to public policy. Remember: data mining would only speed government access to records to which it is already legally entitled. When a technology offers possibly huge public benefits, the rational answer to the fear of its abuse is to use technology to build in safeguards."
"[Admiral John] Poindexter’s resignation reveals how little the country’s priorities have changed since the al-Qaida attacks: he is the only government employee to be fired for national security reasons since 9/11. The message could not be clearer: no one need fear for his job for failing to protect the nation. But embark on a lifesaving endeavor that may, years in the future, if abused, push the envelope of privacy protections, and you’re gone, as Stewart Baker, former general counsel to the National Security Agency, recently testified. The FBI bureaucrats who decided in May 2001 that investigating al-Qaida affiliates in flight schools would constitute racial profiling still draw their government checks; the Justice Department functionaries who kept FBI agents in New York from hunting for ringleaders al-Midhar and al-Hazmi still enjoy their supervisory perks; the FBI paper pushers who refused on bogus legal grounds to let agents in Minnesota search Zacarias Moussaoui’s possessions still opine on the law—and, of course, CIA director George Tenet and FBI director Robert Mueller, who presided over the worst intelligence failure in American history, are still in place."
"[An alternative to data mining,] a voluntary trusted-traveler program drives the privacy advocates wild, because it would expose them as mountebanks. Passengers who wanted to avoid extensive security screening would submit to TSA background checks to get a permanent, fraud-proof biometric ID card that would zip them past security. Passengers who prefer not to give their name to a TSA computer in favor of waiting in line for toiletries inspection would get the full physical screen. The ACLU’s Barry Steinhardt opposes the trusted-traveler concept because it 'creates two classes of airline traveler.' Well, yes: the class of low security risks and the class of unknown security risks, not serfs and aristos, or blacks and whites. Of course Americans, especially frequent business fliers, would freely join the low-risk class in droves, thus revealing the 'privacy community’s' minuscule base."
Read the whole thing!
12:05 AM
APR. 27, 2004: COMMON DEFENSE
The Supreme Court hears oral argument today in the Hamdi and Padilla cases - cases vital to national security. The lawyers of the Committee for the Common Defence (spelled with a "c" as it is in the Constitution) have filed an impressive brief - I hope we can very shortly link to it online.
In the meantime, the battle for the common defense is being waged in the most terribly literal terms in Fallujah. Nice column here by David Brooks.
This is a decisive hour of the war, in Fallujah perhaps even more than Najaf.
And while it rages, we are reminded of the worldwide character of this struggle. Who can make sense of the mysterious anti-regime bombing campaign in Damascus? The Syrians are claiming now that they too are victims of al Qaeda terror - and are even entitled to be considered honorary allies in the war on terror. Right.
nationalreview.com |
