:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 5.21.2004 ::
:: RE Chalabi ::
Turning Friend Into Foe in Baghdad
By ASLA AYDINTASBAS
From The NY Times
Thursday's raid on the Baghdad home of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi Governing Council member who for more than a decade was America's staunchest ally among the Iraqi resistance, is the latest bit of madness in the bungled occupation of Iraq. Unable to protect the lives of the governing council members — who, whatever one thinks of the body, are the only representative voices in Iraq — the Coalition Provisional Authority has now apparently decided to humiliate any who have the temerity to criticize its plans.
The Americans are claiming that Mr. Chalabi passed secret intelligence to Iran. This may or may not be true — he has long had ties to the Tehran government — but in any case it provides a convenient excuse to pin all the occupation's failings on him. No weapons found? It must be because of bad intelligence fed to the Pentagon by Mr. Chalabi's political group, the Iraqi National Congress. Terrorism on the rise? Must be because the Baath Party and the military were disbanded after the war at Mr. Chalabi's insistence. The growing insurgency? It would not have happened had Mr. Chalabi not told us that American troops would be welcomed with flowers.
Finding a scapegoat in an election year is a boon to the Bush administration. And silencing Mr. Chalabi is also essential for garnering United Nations cover for the June 30 transfer of sovereignty in Iraq.
Read More here.
posted by me
:: 10:56:00 PM [+] ::
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