Who Fueled the War for Oil

(April, 2003, Kareem Fahim)

"The Petra Bank scandal is not the only black mark on Chalabi's re'sume'. In January of last year, the State Department suspended funding to the INC, citing "financial management and internal control weaknesses." While the move may highlight State's discomfort with Chalabi's group, it is hardly an isolated accusation. Laith Kubba, a former INC spokesperson, told the Financial Times in December that in the early 1990s, when the group was receiving up to $325,000 a month from the CIA, there was "zero transparency about the INC's finances."  http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0315/fahim.php

Earlier this year, the State Department abruptly stopped funding an INC scheme to collect intelligence inside Iraq. "The INC could only account for $2.5 million out of $4.5 million they received for the program," says a State Department official. "I can't say that there was evidence of corruption or embezzlement, but $2 million was unaccounted for." The more the INC began getting into intelligence work, the more the State Department grew uncomfortable funding the program. "The only reason they stopped paying for that program is that the State Department hates the INC," says a knowledgeable source. Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon picked up the tab. Now, whatever intelligence the INC collects goes straight to the Defense Department, according to spokesman Lt. Col. David Lapan. "The intelligence guys here get the information first and do the analysis," he says. Goodman, the former CIA analyst, concurs, saying, "The INC is in the Pentagon every day."

But the Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else."       http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V13/22/dreyfuss-r.html

and in November 18, 2002, Dreyfuss writes:

"Chalabi would hand over Iraq's oil to U.S. multinationals, and his allies in conservative think tanks are already drawing up the blueprints. "What they have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies," says James E. Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Even more broadly, once an occupying U.S. army seizes Baghdad, Chalabi's INC and its American backers are spinning scenarios about dismantling Saudi Arabia, seizing its oil and collapsing the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It's a breathtaking agenda, one that goes far beyond "regime change" and on to the start of a New New World Order."      http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/21/dreyfuss-r.html

In June of this year (2003), the following by Dreyfuss was posted on the website, "The Nation"

"But an even bigger intelligence scandal is waiting in the wings: the fact that members of the Administration failed to produce an intelligence evaluation of what Iraq might look like after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Instead, they ignored fears expressed by analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department who predicted that postwar Iraq would be chaotic, violent and ungovernable, and that Iraqis would greet the occupying armies with firearms, not flowers.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, it turns out that the same people are responsible for both. According to current and former US intelligence analysts and government officials, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans funneled information, unchallenged, from Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who in turn passed it on to the White House, suggesting that Iraqis would welcome the American invaders."

and deeper in this same article:

"The same unit [the Office of Special Plans] that fed Chalabi's intelligence on WMD to Rumsfeld was also feeding him Chalabi's stuff on the prospects for postwar Iraq," said a leading US government expert on the Middle East. Says a former US ambassador with strong links to the CIA: "There was certainly information coming from the Iraqi exile community, including Chalabi--who was detested by the CIA and by the State Department--saying, 'They will welcome you with open arms.'" Rumsfeld's willingness to accept that view led him to contradict the Chief of Staff of the US Army, who predicted that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to control Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, a view that seems prescient today."                                                      http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20030707&s=dreyfuss

Now moving to Nov. 3, 2003, from CNN the following:

"Before the war, there was a contentious debate about the role of Iraqi security forces once major fighting ended. The State Department and the cia pushed hard for a strategy that would remove only the top layers of Iraq's army and keep most of the rank-and-file intact. They argued that the army was the country's most important unifying national organization, able to transcend ethnic and religious divides.

A former deputy to Jay Garner, the first, short-lived civilian administrator in Iraq, says he thought the plan was to employ most of the soldiers in reconstruction tasks after Saddam fell. But civilians at the Pentagon and in the office of the Vice President agreed with Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the former exile opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, that full de-Baathification of the military was essential. In May, two weeks after Bremer took over as proconsul in Baghdad, he ordered the army completely demobilized.

Many U.S. officials involved in post-Saddam Iraq now feel this was a poor decision, sending a vast number of experienced soldiers home, jobless and armed. For months the State Department and cia have argued for remobilizing as fast as possible. But when lawmakers gathered in the secret S-407 briefing room on Capitol Hill last week to press the point on Bremer, he made it clear that recalling the soldiers was not on. "They made a decision to disband these guys and not use them," said a lawmaker in attendance. Reconstituting the army "would be admitting they made a mistake."        http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/timep.iraq.tm/

Looks to me like this guy Chalabi and his ambitions are a huge part of what fueled this war that bush and the boys wanted to start the day after 9-11.  He gave them the fuel and 9-11 struck the match for them.  Naturally Wolfie and Perle and the rest of the wolf pack had been fanning the flames for a long time before that.

And finally in an interview on October 14, 2003, Chalabi tells Peter Stone and James Kitfield:

"Do you think that the $20 billion or so that the Bush administration
hopes to get for Iraqi reconstruction next year is going to be adequate?

Chalabi: For next year, yes. But Iraq will need about $150 billion over 10
years.

Iraq, of course, has a lot of oil. We'll require major investment -- about
$38 billion -- to get oil production up to 6 million barrels a day. That
will enable us to have total oil revenues, at current prices, of around
$40 billion to $45 billion a year, which would be sufficient to deal with
our needs"                                           http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/msg04554.html

Okay, one more guessing game.  Who said this?  "Do we wait for Saddam and hope for the best, do we wait and hope he doesn't do what we know he is capable of . . . or do we take some preemptive action?"

Give up?

This was from a speech in Nov. 14, 2001 by Richard Perle. 

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact  (excellent article in The New Yorker, 10-20-03)

See, that's why they're so hard headed about this war, they based the whole thing on the words of a guy who, no one in their right mind, would trust.  Besides being totally self-serving,  he leaves a trail behind him of charges of theft and chances are he will do it again, but this time he may have taken your money!

Update on this, Nov. 7, 2003, From the website "Forward"

Seems former CIA director, James Woolsey thinks Chalabi might be just the guy to be in charge in Iraq as the Prime Minister.                                                http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.11.07/news3b.woolseyside.html

Here's a little something from Dreyfuss on Woolsey (12-16-02):

"Voice crackling over his cell phone, Jim Woolsey is trying hard to sound objective and analytical, but he is, well, gloating. The former CIA director has been one of the leaders of the get-Saddam Hussein faction for years, promoting a unilateral U.S. strike against Baghdad. Woolsey is not quite a private citizen, serving as an adviser to the CIA and as a member of the Defense Policy Board, which is chaired by the ringleader of the pro-war neocons, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. Woolsey has also, at least once, served as unofficial liaison to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and other Iraqi opposition groups."                                      http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V13/22/dreyfuss-r.html

But already things are looking  bad as Chalabi taints the deal.  November 10, 2003.   

"The issue of cronyism in Iraq has become a hot topic. Time magazine reports that the recent awarding of telecommunications contracts has created a stir because a major contracts has been awarded to a group headed by an individual with strong ties to Ahmed Chalabi, the man handpicked by neoconservatives in the Pentagon to be the next leader of Iraq. "The mobile contracts were all politically divided," says an Iraqi emigre who returned as a consultant for a telecom firm. "It's the same as Saddam's time. It's about who you know."

 Newsday reports other businessmen with Chalabi connections have also won large contracts for the country's reconstruction, leading to charges by some council members and other Iraqis that the actions are fueling a cronyism that threatens to sabotage the nation-building effort.

 http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1110/dailyUpdate.html

Chalabi has been absent from Iraq for weeks?  Where is he and has anyone checked the petty cash box?Didn't we hear a couple of weeks ago about some money being unaccounted for by the Iraqi Governing Council? 

October 23, 2003

" A leading British aid agency has accused Iraq's U.S. and British administrators of failing to account for at least $4 billion (2.4 billion pounds) in oil revenues and other money that is meant to go towards rebuilding the country."   

Christian Aid said its figures were a conservative estimate of oil revenues collected by the CPA since the war, prewar oil revenues handed over from the U.N. "oil-for-food" account and seized assets of Saddam's government.

All but $1 billion of more than $5 billion of Iraqi funds had disappeared into a "financial black hole", it said.

  http://uk.news.yahoo.com/031023/325/ebyef.html

Let's watch  this guy Chalabi, I have a feeling we're going to hear a lot more about him over the next year or so.  Hopefully I'm wrong!

patricia