I’m tickled at the spectacle of former Bush Administration insider, Richard Perle whining to anyone who’ll listen about how poor Ahmed (and by extension his fellow neocons) are being mistreated (Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case to the White House) by the Bush White House. His guy’s been “found out” as a liar, fraud and Iranian spy and Perle isn’t going to take it lying down. None of it has any truth to it. You see, Ahmed is a Boy Scout and never done anything but good to the U.S.
Chalabi as Iraqi Henry VIII (credit: Whiskey Bar)
I’m also amazed by the normally disciplined and “on message” Bushites splintering into factions on the subject of Chalabi. I’m just not used to seeing former Bush acolytes like Perle ranting in fury against the CIA and DIA, which are after all, still nominally agencies within the Bush Administration (aren’t they?).
Perle mustered the best and brightest of the neocon hacks including James Woolsey and Newt Gingrich and trooped over to meet with Condy to plead their case for dear Ahmed. As for where Chalabi’s powerful Administration sponsors are in all of this…it appears they’re keeping their heads down and laying low:
…there has been relative silence so far from Mr. Chalabi’s supporters within the administration. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who favored going to war in Iraq and was a patron of Mr. Chalabi, did not respond to numerous requests this week for an interview.
The current views of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, are not known. Both strongly supported Mr. Chalabi before and during the war in Iraq.
Perle seems to be imbibing very strong drink that clouds his judgment when he contends that Chalabi’s “falling out” with the Americans will turn him into an Iraqi patriot, thereby causing all Iraqis to fall all over themselves to recognize him as their savior:
Mr. Perle said the action against Mr. Chalabi would burnish his anti-American credentials in Iraq and possibly help him to be elected to political office. “In that regard, this clumsy and outrageous assault on him will only improve his prospects,” Mr. Perle said.
Sure, Perle’s embrace of Chalabi will make all right-thinking Iraqis realize that the latter is a righteous, good and virtuous Iraqi leader.
Finally, I’d like to offer a prize of an all expenses paid weekend with Richard Perle in his Pentagon bunker if you can parse this closing Perleism from the Bumiller article:
He also said that Mr. Chalabi was not alone in supplying intelligence to the United States government that turned out to be false.
“I know of no inaccurate information that was supplied uniquely by anyone brought to us by the Iraqi National Congress,” Mr. Perle said.
What does this mean? Are we mere mortals meant to know? Can we plumb the depths of this pearl like (ooh–I punned and I didn’t even know it) wisdom?? My guess is that Perle means to say that any false information supplied by Chalabi’s people or informants was corroborated by other sources. What a load of crap! He’s basically saying: “I know my guy is a liar, but there were other liars who confirmed his lies so that doesn’t make him such a bad liar.”
