Hitchens drinks Kool-Aid prepared by Chalabi!

No doubt heavily spiked.


http://slate.msn.com/id/2101345/


I first met Dr. Ahmad Chalabi in the spring of 1998, a year when George Bush was still the governor of Texas and when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were talking at a high volume about the inescapable necessity of removing Saddam Hussein from power because of his continuous connection to terrorism and his addiction to weapons of mass destruction. (Remember ... ?) It was also the year that the Senate passed, without a dissenting voice, the Iraq Liberation Act.

At our long meeting, Chalabi impressed me for three reasons. The first was that he thought the overthrow of one of the world's foulest-ever despotisms could be accomplished. I knew enough by then to know that any Iraqi taking this position in public was risking his life and the lives of his family. I did not know Iraq very well but had visited the country several times in peace and war and met numerous Iraqis, and the second thing that impressed me was that, whenever I mentioned any name, Chalabi was able to make an exhaustive comment on him or her. (The third thing that impressed me was his astonishingly extensive knowledge of literary and political arcana, but that's irrelevant to our purposes here.)

The anti-Chalabi forces, I found upon inquiry, had several criticisms to make. The first was that he was a shady businessman whose Petra Bank had fleeced the depositors of Jordan. The second was that he was an "exile," remote from Iraq's reality. The third was that he was too close to the Iranians. The fourth was that he was too ambitious. The fifth was that he was an American puppet.

I do not know what happened at the Petra Bank, and not even Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, who have done the most work on the subject, can be sure that Saddam Hussein's agents in Jordan were not involved in the indictment of Chalabi by a rather oddly constituted Jordanian court. It could be, for all I know, that he was both guilty and framed. The litigation and recrimination continues, and it ought at least to be noted that Chalabi still maintains he can prove his case.

and it ought at least to be noted that Chalabi still maintains he can prove his case.

Then why didn't he stick around to prove his case in a fucking Jordanian court?

There's a great article on the front page of DU about Chalabi. Does Hitchens even read anything other than his own stuff?

I'm innocent! It was a set up!

very good scotch.

I am sooooo ready for him to go away.

So he's mixing his scotch with Kool-Aid in the convenient 55 gallon kit drum size. ;-)

The Chalabi compound that was raided last week was the home of Chalabi's SISTER. Yes, she lived in Baghdad, all the while her brother was widely known to be working against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Funny.

She lived in a palatial estate. Even though she was a Shi'ite, the much heralded oppressed minority in Iraq. Funny. Wasn't Saddam Hussein persecuting people like that? How did he manage to give Sister Chalabi a pass on an adventure weekend at Abu Ghraib? Just asking.

Hmm -- a Shi'ite, with a brother actively working to overthrow the country's dictator, who not only survived but managed to live at a very high level of wealthy comfort in the capital city of that oppressed nation -- and Hitchens was WORRIED about Chalabi's family?

Ah, come on.

This is as credible as Scott McClelland saying that W's tax breaks are for Moms and Dads. Well, Ken and Linda Lay are Moms and Dads. Dick and Lynn Cheney are Mons and Dads....

:toast: