- In the mayhem that followed the explosions in Baghdad
and Karbala this week, Ahmad Chalabi, an ever more powerful member of the
Iraqi Governing Council and a Pentagon favourite, was swiftly at the scene,
behaving like a politician come to offer sympathy. It was a shrewd piece
of public relations - if you forget the responsibility Chalabi bears for
Iraq's present tragic condition. It was Chalabi, more than any other individual,
who helped persuade the US that toppling Saddam Hussein would bring peace
and democracy, and break the link that he alleged existed between the Iraqi
leader and al-Qaida.
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- The argument surrounding the decision to go to war in
Iraq, Tony Blair said yesterday, is not about trust or integrity but about
judgment and intelligence. That is also the case his critics make. In the
approach to war, both the US and the UK governments mobilised a mishmash
of arguments in a campaign of persuasion that was based not on rigorous
analysis of intelligence but on the selective use of data and informants.
And in this sorry tale, no one played a more critical role than the man
many proclaim the most likely future leader of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi.
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- He has been working to take power in Iraq for a long
time. The son of a wealthy and influential family in Iraq that lost its
place with the fall of the monarchy, Chalabi has a long association with
US intelligence. In the early 1990s, he was considered a serious asset
by the CIA - but they soon found him to be unreliable. By then, however,
he had found other supporters, among them the staff and advisers of one
of the neo-cons' favourite thinktanks, the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (Jinsa) in Washington. In 1997, Jinsa declared: "Jinsa
has been working closely with Iraqi National Council leader Dr Ahmad Chalabi
to promote Saddam Hussein's removal from office and a subsequently democratic
future for Iraq."
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- Jinsa describes its mandate as two-fold: "To educate
the American public about the importance of an effective US defence capability...and
to inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the
important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests
in the Mediterranean and the Middle East." Their interests, Chalabi
persuaded them, coincided: Saddam, the supporter of Palestinian suicide
bombers, the strongest and most troublesome leader in the Arab world and
a menace to Israel, should be replaced with a friendly government that
would make peace with Israel and become the US's best Arab friend.
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- The advocates of radical action in the Middle East came
to power with Bush. The next steps are now well documented. As Richard
Perle once complained: "The CIA has been engaged in a character assassination
of Ahmad Chalabi for years now, and it's a disgrace." To bypass such
obstacles, an alternative intelligence group - the Office of Special Plans
- was created. But there was still a shortage of evidence on two key points:
that Saddam had WMD and that he had links to al-Qaida. Step forward Ahmad
Chalabi, whose INC benefited from nearly $100m of US taxpayers money, despite
Chalabi's conviction for a $300m bank fraud in Jordan. Chalabi, who knows
a market when he sees one, claimed his sources inside and outside Iraq
could supply the necessary evidence.
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- In 2001, Colin Powell declared: "He [Saddam Hussein]
has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of
mass destruction...our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbours
of Iraq." Tony Blair told the Commons in November 2000 that, "We
believe that the sanctions regime has effectively contained Saddam Hussein."
These assessments coincided with the view of the intelligence services
and the inspectors.
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- The alternative intelligence, marshalled to make the
case for war, came overwhelmingly from Chalabi's INC and their carefully
coached "sources". Among the INC allegations that have not been
borne out were that Hussein had built mobile biological weapons facilities,
that he was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons programme and that he
had trained Islamic warriors at a camp south of Baghdad. Now defence officials
acknowledge that the defectors' tales were "shaky" at best.
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- On whose judgment was this shaky information included
in official pre-war intelligence estimates of Iraq's illicit weapons programmes
and key statements by US and UK politicians? On September 12 2002, for
instance, claims by Iraqi military officers supplied by the INC that Iraq
had been training Arabs in "hijacking planes and trains, planting
explosives in cities, sabotage and assassinations" were given uncritical
prominence in a White House report. And what is now described as an INC
"fabrication" - that Iraq had mobile biological warfare research
facilities - was included in Powell's presentation to the UN security council
in February 2003.
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- To give wider credibility to this dubious narrative,
Chalabi planted stories in mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times,
stories that were then quoted as independent corroborative evidence by
administration officials. The paper's now much-criticised specialist on
WMD, Judith Miller, has acknowledged her 10-year association with Chalabi.
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- Chalabi has admitted that the "evidence" he
supplied was wrong. Unlike Blair, he is no longer interested in pretending
that there are any WMD in Iraq, but nor is he repentant. Bush may lose
the election and Blair is trapped in the political minefield of the war's
aftermath, but Chalabi is a clear winner. "We are heroes in error,"
he told the Telegraph. Since Saddam was gone, "What was said before
is not important."
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- When the US flew Chalabi into Iraq by helicopter early
in the war, along with 700 friends and supporters, he was not remotely
electable. He did, though, look like a man positioning himself to be at
the centre of power. This week, Iraq's provisional constitution was agreed.
Given Bush's need to create a puppet government in time for the US elections,
power will now remain in the hands of the governing council until such
time as elections might be held - a promise that recedes into the future
with each terrorist outrage. The first drafts of the Iraqi transitional
administrative law were written by Chalabi's nephew. The longer elections
are postponed, the better for Chalabi, who is now in control of Iraq's
finances and of de-Ba'athification.
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- Perhaps his greatest coup was to gain possession of 25
tonnes of captured Saddam documents that could prove useful in the future.
Before the war, for instance, the Jordanian foreign minister criticised
Chalabi as untrustworthy. Chalabi then threatened to "expose"
documentary evidence of the Jordanian royal family's close relations with
Saddam. The public criticisms stopped. Since the war several forged documents
have come into circulation. Some have been used to animate dead arguments,
others to discredit critics of the war, such as George Galloway.
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- With power there also come opportunities for enrichment.
US authorities in Iraq have awarded more than $400m in contracts to a company
that has extensive family and business ties to Chalabi. One, for $327m,
to supply equipment for the Iraqi armed forces, is now under review after
protests to Congress.
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- If intelligence, Blair tells us, is to be of even greater
importance in the future, its reliability is critical - an argument, perhaps,
to learn from recent experience. Not for the US Defence Department. It
plans to spend $4m over the next year buying intelligence on Iraq. And
who does it plan to buy that intelligence from? Step forward Ahmad Chalabi.
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- Isabel.Hilton@guardian.co.uk
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