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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2008, pages 61-62 Waging Peace The Man Who Pushed America to War
JOURNALIST AND Emmy Award-winning NBC producer Aram Roston discussed and signed his latest book, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmed Chalabi, at Washington, DC’s Busboys and Poets Restaurant on April 19. Although Chalabi refused to cooperate in any way with Roston’s research for the book, the author nevertheless seems to have done a thorough job. He examined court files from around the world and talked to anyone who had any contact or association with the man. Roston described Chalabi as a master manipulator of others. “Chalabi’s medium is people,” he writes, “and as an Iraqi exile his grazing area was America.” According to Roston, Chalabi influenced America in three ways. One was ideological: he influenced a generation into believing that Saddam Hussain was the embodiment of evil and must be overthrown. In time, Chalabi connected with well-known neocon figures, acting as their main facilitator and source concerning Saddam Hussain and Iraq. These individuals included Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Doug Feith and Michael Ledeen. “They dined with him and met him and conversed,” Roston writes, “and through well-placed op-eds and clever talking points and sound bites their ideas bled into the mainstream.” Secondly, even though he was a foreign national, Chalabi was so persuasive that he was able to dictate U.S. policy. With the help of his friends on Capitol Hill—such as Senators Trent Lott, Sam Brownback and Joe Lieberman—he was able to convince Congress to quickly pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which was tailor-made to assist in his mission of toppling Saddam and making way for his organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to ease into power in Iraq after Saddam’s fall. Finally, he presented false propaganda to the public and the U.S. government mostly by manipulating the media. Many reporters, eager for material and taken in by his charm, accepted without question Chalabi’s spin on reality. Even though U.S. intelligence usually discredited Chalabi’s claims, his information would still sway public opinion, finding its way into news programs such as CBS News’ “60 minutes” and PBS’ “Frontline.” David Rose, a well-respected journalist for Vanity Fair, was so taken in by Chalabi that he wrote an editorial calling for the invasion of Iraq. Roston said that Rose was so devastated by Chalabi’s deception that he confessed to Roston that at one point he was thinking of leaving journalism for good. “Rose asked Chalabi, why aren’t even more reporters supportive of you?” Roston told his audience. “Chalabi told him, because they are not as moral as you, David.” Most surprising is that all of Chalabi’s activities were fully funded by the U.S. taxpayers, to the tune of what Roston estimated to be $59 million. In the early 1990s the CIA contacted Chalabi with a plan to form an opposition party to Saddam. While the CIA envisioned Chalabi as a sort of manager for the INC, Chalabi saw his role as much bigger—as the one who would run the show after Saddam. Of the $20 million set aside for the secret project, the CIA gave Chalabi $4 million. By 1996, however, they cut him off, having decided he was a “divisive character.” Still, Chalabi pushed for more funding and threatened to blow the whistle on the CIA. Chalabi began to search the world for others who would bankroll his dreams of power, such as Taiwan and Israel. He proposed a plan he called a “rolling coup,” in which a military enclave would be set up within Iraq and in time the regular Iraqi army would leave Saddam and come over to the other side. In the years leading up to the U.S. invasion, the State Department gave Chalabi another $33 million; in 2002 he received $6 million dollars from the Defense Intelligence Agency. “9/11 really helped Ahmed Chalabi,” Roston said, explaining that the exiled Iraqi was able to plant three false story lines in the American press which were very effective in linking Saddam to 9/11. Days after 9/11, the U.S. press reported that Saddam was training hijackers. Chalabi also spread stories of underground mines, weapons of mass destruction, and bio-weapons labs in Iraq. Remember the report about Saddam’s mistress and her tale of how she saw Bin Laden in Iraq? This story was quickly discredited. “In fact, the U.S. government discredited everything Chalabi was saying,” Roston said, “but the press would still put out the information he fed them.” Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chalabi’s attempts to take power were not as successful as he and the Bush administration had hoped. Chalabi ran for office with the slogan of “We got rid of Saddam,” but the candidate and his message fell flat with the Iraqi people. In early 2006 he was appointed oil minister, but by the middle of the year Chalabi’s only position of power was as the chairman of the de-Ba’athification commission. Today, Chalabi has been appointed by the new Iraqi government to oversee Baghdad’s municipal “services.” According to Roston, he is still seen as someone who can cut through the bureaucratic red tape and get things done. “What I like about Ahmed Chalabi is he always comes back,” Roston said, adding that he is impressed that Chalabi was able to use a foreign power’s 150,000 troops to accomplish his goals. “Someone asked him about using the Bush administration,” Roston said. “Chalabi responded by asking, ‘who is using who[m]?’” —Jamal Najjab |
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