Various musings from Juan Cole. On Chalabi, Cheney, and gang, kidnappings in Iraq, Sistani, the constitution, etc. Some links in the original don't transfer here.
US Intelligence Follies: Why Haven't Cheney, Feith and Chalabi been Impeached?
While everyone is beating up on John Kerry for letting it slip he thinks the Bushies are crooked, we might ponder the sort of thing that might have led him to this impression.
It seems fairly obvious by now that the Bush administration likes being lied to. It is even paying for the privilege of being screwed over. This is sort of reverse crooked. It is to crookedness as sado-masochism is to sex. But there are grounds for suspicion of out and out crookedness, too. Reuters reports (as will all the major newspapers today) that the Defense Intelligence Agency is paying Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress $340,000 per month for "intelligence." The INC is the organization that lied to the US until it was blue in the face, falsely claiming it knew for sure that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and weapons. It supplied single-source reports from defectors that were full of tale tales.
Chalabi, who has gotten the US into a quagmire in Iraq, is completely unrepentant. "We're in Baghdad," he says. That makes all the lies all right. He even went so far, in a 60 Minutes interview, as to blame the US intelligence agencies for actually believing the cock and bull stories his people fed them. 'Don't they have fact checkers?' he seemed to say.
Most recently, Chalabi joined a 5-man Shiite dissident group that tried to derail the signing of the interim constitution. This is a man whose organization is getting $4 million a year from the US, and he was screwing Bremer and Bush over royally! It came out that in the 1970s the CIA had put King Hussein of Jordan on its payroll. But in comparison, he turns out to have been a cheap date, and a rather more reliable one than Chalabi. Although the Defense Intelligence Agency is saying that the Iraqi National Congress supplies it with good intelligence, I find it difficult to believe that you couldn't get even better intelligence in Iraq by having DIA agents on the ground just use the $4 million for local informants. You worry about the disinformation Chalabi may be supplying them with. Have any of his personal enemies been picked up?
This revelation follows testimony by CIA director George Tenet that he has had to run around asking high Bush administration officials like Dick Cheney to please not hype intelligence to make it say things that are not in evidence. It turns out that Cheney has been recommending the highly questionable Feith dossier on supposed pre-war links between Saddam and al-Qaeda to people. (Wanna bet Chalabi and his people supplied all those supposed anecdotes in the first place?).
And, it turns out that Feith's Office of Special Plans, a Neocon Pentagon operation linked to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's similar rogue office, briefed high White House officials without the presence or knowledge of George Tenet. What intelligence did it supply them? Why, red-hot reports directly from . . . the Iraqi National Congress.
It turns out further that Chalabi's nephew Salem works for the same Israel-based law firm as Doug Feith (when Doug is not in office), and has set up a Baghdad branch of it. All parties concerned deny influence-peddling, but if Doug Feith has any authority at all over the payment of $4 million a year to the uncle of the partner of his law firm, this smells bad.
More recently it transpires that Nour USA, run by Chalabi friend A. Huda Farouki, probably low-balled the Pentagon with a bid to provide military equipment to the new Iraqi army, which it won. The company had no experience with such provisioning, and its bid was denounced by competitors as unrealistically low. (In US government bidding, the lowest bid usually wins, but it has to be clear that the bid is realistic.) In this case, the Pentagon appears not to have visited the companies competing with Nour to explore their pricing, which is usually done. Poland and Spain were royally pissed off that their companies lost out to Nour USA, and they suspected cronyism. Finally the Pentagon cancelled the contract.
So, my question is, why isn't Ahmad Chalabi impeached? He was appointed to the Interim Governing Council by the United States government. He presumably serves at its pleasure. He has more or less openly admitted to providing it grossly inaccurate "intelligence." He is still being paid for intelligence provision, nevertheless. His nephew seems to be trading on a personal relationship with the Undersecretary of Defense for Planning, Douglas Feith. His friend seems to be involved in sharp business practices with Pentagon contracts. And, he is still wanted in Jordan, where he was indicted over a decade ago for having embezzled $300 million from a bank he was running in Amman in the 1980s. Would a person around whom there were all these questions get appointed to a high government post in a democratic country that practiced the principle of accountability? If not, why should he be foisted on the poor Iraqi people?
And, why isn't Feith impeached? Why was he allowed to usurp Tenet's role? Why isn't Cheney impeached? Either they lied or they were so gullible that neither should still be in office.
Cheney's own dishonesty comes out in Ron Susskind's book, based on interviews and documents from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill. The anecdote is that Cheney wanted to go for a second gargantuan tax cut on his billionnaire buddies. Even W. balked, and asked whether it wasn't time to do something for the middle class. Cheney roared back, no! this is our due! we won the mid-term elections. Cheney didn't say, "A second tax cut will benefit the middle class." He doesn't care about the middle class. The "our" in "our due" is people making seven figures and up. Now, of course, the Bush administration keeps saying that its tax cuts on the super-wealthy are making us all rich. But then Alan Greenspan came along and revealed that the way they were going to be paid for was actually to cut social security payments for the middle and working classes. (Before social security, the elderly were the poorest group in America, and we are heading back that way under this administration).
The answer to the question about impeachment, of course, is that the Republicans control all three branches of government. In such a virtual one-party state, accountability goes out the window. One worries that that is the real lesson the new rulers of Iraq will take from their American mentors.
posted by Juan Cole at 3/11/2004 09:19:15 AM
Sistani warns of his own Assassination, Civil War
al-Hayat: Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, March's president-for-a-month of the Interim Governing Council, revealed in a news conference on Wednesday that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had warned late last week that "the enemies of Iraq" were "plotting to kill him [Sistani] in order to spark a civil war in the country." He said that "regional, international, and local parties are working to light this fuse," and he called on the Iraqis to avoid falling for it. Sistani remarked, "The enemies of Iraq have been working day and night, for a long time, to create an atmosphere encouraging of sectarian civil war, which will devour everything, the verdant with the barren, and will end the unity of the people and the nation." He expected these enemies to kill him, to provoke the Shiites into a reaction that would lead to communal warfare. He announced that he knew of the existence of someone trying to assassinate him, which frightens him. He emphasized that he "forbids everyone to use his murder as a means of lighting the fuse of hateful sectarian warfare."
Meanwhile, the Sunni cleric who administers that community's pious endowments, Dr. Adnan Muhammad Salman, said he feared that the "usurpation of tens of Sunni mosques might lead to the kindling of public disturbances." He called on the Shiite clerical leadership to denounced persons who attack Sunnis and their women, and who disrespect the companions and wives of the Prophet Muhammad.
There have been lots of instances where Sunni mosques have been taken over by angry Shiites in the south, on the grounds that Saddam built them there to plant Sunni influence. The Sadrist movement has been especially active on this front. Sistani has denounced the practice. Shiites view many of the early Islamic figures holy to Sunnis as traitors to the family of the prophet, and during their Muharram mourning ceremonies they often ritually curse them. Objects of their ire include the caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar, and A'isha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, all of whom they feel did not do right by Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, of whom they are partisans.
Then, British special representative in Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock, waxed especially blunt. Speaking of the Iraqis, Greenstock said, "They've got an opportunity. There are things that can go wrong. We will be here to make those things more difficult to go wrong. The resources will come in. The oil will start flowing faster. The investment will come in. The neighbours will want to co-operate with the new Iraq." But the former British ambassador to the United Nations acknowledged that dangers were rife in the post-Saddam Hussein era and that success was not guaranteed. He bluntly addressed the spectre of civil war haunting Iraq's Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and Turkmen.
Between Sistani and Greenstock, one comes away today with a song on one's lips and a spring in one's step.
Finally, al-Hayat received a communique from the "Council of Shiite Turkmen" in Kirkuk, complaining bitterly about the Basic Law or interim constitution, calling it "ill-omened." It made Arabic and Kurdish the two state languages, ignoring the Turkmen. The Turkmen are marginalized (none of their party members is on the Interim Governing Council). The US is strongly allied with the Kurdish militias, and 70% of the police in Kirkuk are Kurds even though Kurds are a minority in the city. Then they want their own Turkmen province, of which Kirkuk must be the capital.
Bahr al-Ulum told the paper that he wants to satisfy the Turkmen. Good political answer, but I don't see how you do that and avoid an explosion with the Kurds. (Turkmen are probably 2% of the population, Kurds more like 15-17%).
In other news, men disguised as Iraqi police ambushed and killed two US civilian contractors and their Iraqi translator on Wednesday, near the southern Shiite city of al-Hilla.
posted by Juan Cole at 3/11/2004 09:18:50 AM
Wave of Kidnappings Continues in Baghdad
Jack Fairweather of the Independent reports that the wave of kidnappings that has racked Baghdad continues, at an average of 2 a day. The typical ransom is $25,000. If we extrapolate out that rate, it is 720 abductions per 5 million people per annum (.014 percent of the population is abducted each year).
Colombia has the world's highest criminal kidnapping rate, with 3,000 abductions a year. That is 3,000 abductions per 38 million people per annum, or .0008 percent of the population being kidnapped each year. Obviously, Baghdad's rate is higher. This conclusion should be repeated. The wave of criminal kidnappings in Baghdad makes it a world leader in abductions, outstripping even Colombia.
Fairweather writes of Abbas Jassim, who was recently abducted. ' On entering Baghdad he was blindfolded. He remembers being led into a house and put in a small room beneath stairs. He was then bound and gagged. That night the kidnappers beat him for 20 minutes on his stomach and legs. His ransom had been set at a million dollars. Abbas was allowed a tearful call home the next morning. "We were powerless to do anything," said Mohammed Mehsen, his cousin. "The women of the family were weeping in one corner, the men shouting angrily. None of us could see why they were hurting the kindest and most well-liked man in the neighbourhood." Over the next few days, friends and family began arriving at Abbas' house . . . Within a week the family had raised $250,000. In daily conversations with the kidnappers the family held their nerve and brought the price down. A night for the handover was set. Captain Feroz Mohammed, of the Special Crimes unit, has worked on hundreds of kidnap cases since the summer. Unfortunately, few Iraqis have so far trusted him and his men - Abbas' family among them. "People are very scared," the policeman said yesterday. "They don't trust our ability to catch criminals. If people worked with us we would be able to bring kidnapping to an end." '
posted by Juan Cole at 3/11/2004 09:17:54 AM
More on Interim Constitution
Roger Myerson, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, shared with me the following on the Interim Constitution, and has kindly consented to my reprinting it here:
"Article 55 . . .may be a key to the evolution of power in Iraq. This article
specifies that any group that has taken control of a Governate Council
before 1 July 2004 under the CPA can retain control "until free, direct,
and full elections, conducted pursuant to the law, are held." There is no
indication of when such Governate elections may occur. In particular,
these Governate elections are not linked to the National Assembly
elections, nor is it clear whether the National Assembly has the power to
call Governate elections (since "no member of any region government,
governor, member of any governate... may be dismissed by the federal
government"). As I read it, the suggestion is that local elections may not
be generally required until a final constitution is approved. Article 56
also promises that these Governate councils will get a significant role in
administering the country.
"So if an aspiring national leader can develop a factional network that has
widespread control of Governate councils (established without elections
under the CPA), then that leader may be able to control local elections to
the National Assembly in these Governates and may dominate the national
political process thereafter.
"I have written essays and professional articles [2, 3, below] arguing that, to
promote democracy in occupied Iraq, local elections should have been held
first and then local councils should have be given leading roles in the
constitution of the provisional government. But if local elections are
indefinitely postponed, then the establishment of a system of autonomous
and unelected Governate leaders could instead seriously jeopardize the
development of democracy in Iraq. Many people may be thinking only of
Kurdish concerns for autonomy when they read Articles 55 and 56. But we
should recognize the power of local authorities throughout the country to
administer and control the elections to the National Assembly. These local
councils hold the keys to national power in the new Iraq.
The Basic Law's ambiguity about the timing of local elections may give
some hope. For example, if the CPA before June were to administer free
democratic elections for local councils in all Governates, then the
significance of these articles would be reversed.
Sincerely,
Roger Myerson "
References
[1] geocities.com
[2] home.uchicago.edu
[3] home.uchicago.edu
Roger B. Myerson
W.C.Norby Professor of Economics
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
home.uchicago.edu
N.B. A reader challenged this reading of Article 55, noting that it does in fact provide for provincial elections concurrent with national ones. On that point, Professer Myerson retracts.
Cole says: I still think the point that free and fair municipal and provincial elections should ideally have been held before the national one is a good one.
- 3/11/04 7:23 pm.
posted by Juan Cole at 3/11/2004 09:17:06 AM
juancole.com |
