It seems a comment on a post from reader Metal-or-die about Ahmed Chalabi’s involvement in fueling the protests against Jordan might have a kernel of truth to it.
This from the Jordan Times [full article here]:
A top Iraqi Shiite leader Imam Mohammad Mahdi Khalisi joined the lawmakers in rejecting the allegations. Petra quoted a statement by Khalisi’s office in Baghdad as accusing Iraqi politician “Ahmed Chalabi and an intelligence agency in an Iraq neighboring country of attempting to harm Jordan-Iraq ties.”
A Jordanian court sentenced Chalabi to 22 years in prison for fraud and embezzling $288 million from Petra Bank, which he founded and ran until its collapse in 1989, and moving the funds into Swiss accounts.”
Interesting revelation, no?
The insurgency is winding down. It’s not luring new manpower to Iraq, and it’s hated by the Iraqi people who have to deal with the carbombs and other nonsense. I’d be surprised to see bombings as normal events in Baghdad in six months. And in 18 months there won’t be any insurgency at all. Iraqis aren’t a bunch of narrow-minded Bedouins like the Saudis who treat their wives like cattle and make them wear black bags over their bodies – Iraqis know how to run a civil society and the U.S. is giving them a chance to start over. That’s all. It’s in the interests of the U.S. to encourage and incubate popularly responsive states in the Middle East. That’s what Bush is trying to do.
Of course the U.S. is building permanent bases in Iraq. We’re not completely leaving – we’re going to lease those bases in Iraq the same way we do in the U.K., Germany, Japan and other countries. But those troops will probably number less than 50,000 and have little or no official interaction with the Iraqi people, and will generally leave the base only when off-duty. And if the Iraqis want us to leave, we’ll leave. The only place in the world where we keep a base contrary to the wishes of the local government is Cuba, and that’s because Castro is our enemy and we like to screw with him. We had a base outside Tripoli in Libya for years and years – my father was stationed there in the Air Force, for about six months around 1960. He never left the base – the opinion of the command was that the local population and U.S. troops didn’t mix well, and so going off base was frowned upon. The United States Air Force is going to be keeping the peace in the Middle East for some years to come – perhaps 25 or more. The free flow of oil into the world market must be guaranteed.
Regarding Iran, I’m telling you no one cares about the Shah today – he was just another strongman we propped up to keep the Soviets from taking over the world. We didn’t like him, though he was among the best of the bunch, just as we didn’t like Marcos in the Phillipines. We didn’t like any of them. But we held our collective nose and lived with it, because the alternative – Soviet client state – was worse. What still pisses off Americans is the embassy takeover.
Insurgency is weakening?
Dude, do you get your info from primetime news? In that case, yeah Al-Qaida and Saddam are one and the same.
Read this:
AND here … You think Iraq is a success story?
And here
No electricity in Baghdad, the US stronghold. No water either. But hey, that’s success. Let’s see New Yorkers living without those for two consecutive years. Can you hear the whining yet?
US out of Iraq? Hahahaha…read this:
And if you are going to use the line that the US is building a stable security apparatus in Iraq: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11127663.htm
Am not interested in screwing the Shah but it is interesting how you speak for everyone when you say no one was interested in that.
I guess no one was interested in Mosadegh when he was elected to lead Iran and a joint US-UK operation overthrew him the moment he said “nationalise oil”. To ensure a puppet regime was not overthrown in Iran, the US-UK created the Savak, one of the most brutal secret intelligence service in the 20th century. Bravo.
But hey you know better than me, cos you be a gringo and Iraqis are all liars. After all, what could Iraqis know about their own country, their own kin, yada, yada, yada.
Yes, it’s a success.
By the way, I just saw Elvis on Oprah.
It is also a battleground of US whims of Empire and a growing Russo-Chinese alliance. If the US fails in Iraq on an economic, military, social and war-against-terrorism level, then it days as the only superpower are numbered.
Oh, please, Metalordie. Firstly, the U.S. hasn’t failed in Iraq – the war is over, the occupation is over, and the provisional government phase ended today, with the convening of the parliament. The insurgency is weakening dramatically, and within 18 months most US troops will have been pulled out, back to bases in the U.S., the Pacific and Europe. It’s not a quagmire; it is a success.
And even if we were to fail – the U.S. has 4000 or 5000 meticulously maintained nuclear warheads and at last count 12 aircraft carriers, 27 cruisers, 55 destroyers, 35 frigates and 72 submarines – 18 of which carry medium range nuclear missiles. We haven’t used the nukes in 60 years, but if China were to invade Taiwan, there might very well be a limited – or possibly extensive – exchange between the U.S. and China. So long as the U.S. maintains its lead in munitions delivery technology, it will remain a superpower.
Secondly, the U.S. has no “whims of empire”. The U.S. hasn’t forcibly acquired new territory in over 100 years, and most of that (Cuba, the Phillipines) was made autonomous and then sovereign within 25 years of the Spanish-American War. Only Guam and Puerto Rico were retained, and Puerto Rico is free to leave any time it chooses – independence usually polls around 30 or 35%. In Guam independence isn’t even an issue – the island is not self-sufficient without U.S. capital. We’re a commercial republic – all we want to do is make money. And one of the hallmarks of our commercial culture is what some South Americans refer to as “gringo logic” – Americans (and Brits and Aussies) expect all parties to a deal to profit by it. This is part of the reason why Ibn Saud affiliated himself with Americans in the first place. We want Iraq’s oil – but we intend to pay market value for it, not steal it.
The US has not forgotten it lost its agent the Shah to Shia Islamic ideology.
Screw the Shah. No one gives a damn about that. And we don’t hold against the Shia in general – we hold it against the Iranian Shia theocracy. The invasion and seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran is what angers us. And Jimmy Carter will forever be a figure of scorn in the U.S. for allowing it to go unchallenged – a declaration of war should have been submitted to Congress the day after it was taken. The Iranian people, however, have suffered amply for their short-sightedness in inviting Khomeini and his cronies to rule, and are ripe to revolt. The only reason the U.S. hasn’t already struck at Iran’s nuclear facilities is that we’re hoping the regime will topple from public opposition, as in Beirut. Bush doesn’t want to whip up nationalist fervor that will benefit the regime.
aka Jeff, Yes, it stretches back to when the Arabs invaded the declining empire of Persia. Until then it had been the longest-reigning empire in history. The Arabs ended that.
I was engaged to an Iranian girl once – a history PhD candidate – and she told me that the two lowest ebbs in Iranian/Persian history were 1) the invasion of Alexander the Great (he burned their capital Persepolis) and 2) the invasion of the Arabs who are referred to in Persian lore as “lizards”.
Now, I cannot attest that this is necessarily a prologue to current events or even if that is generally true across the board for all Iranians or even the Mullahs running the country.
Currently, it is in Iran’s best interests that Iraq remain unstable. 1) Because it keeps the Americans occupied in the quagmire and 2) a stable Iraq will always be seen as a threat to Iran and 3) as long as Iraq is in turmoil the centre of Shia theology will remain Qum and not Najaf.
Najaf is the centre of the Shia universe but when the Baathists came to power and persecuted and/or downtrod the Shia clergy, the balance of power shifted to Qum. This translates into influence and massive amounts of finances all channeled to Qum.
This has changed somewhat in recent months as the Shia in Iraq gain a hand. Some of those finances and donations from Shia around the world are now making their way to Najaf instead of Qum.
This now adds to the historical rivalry between Iraq and Iran, Arabs and Persians. Saddam played on that historical rivalry in many of his speeches in the 70s and 80s and would address the Arabs and say “we are all that stands before you and the Persian horde”.
Use of the word horde was not coincidental; it was to play on Arab fears of 1258 when the Mongols sacked Baghdad and effectively ended the golden age of the Muslim empire.
Of course, when the Gulf War started, Saddam turned to his former enemy and starting making nice. The Iranians, rightly so, never trusted him although relations between Iraq and Iran improved. This is also much in thanks to the US policy of dual containment, Iraq and Iran.
Iran wants to be a regional power, believes it is a regional power, and wants to dictate terms as a regional power. This was Saddam’s falling in the late 80s when his quasi-victory over Iran in 1988 made him feel invincible.
Iran knows fully well that they alone can determine the outcome in Iraq. There are thousands of Iranian agents in Iraq. The Badr Brigades are full of non-Arabic speaking cadres. Care to guess where they came from?
So when King Abdallah says that Iranian success against the west is Iranian success in Iraq he is not totally off the mark. But Iraq is more than a battleground of Iran versus the west. It is also a battleground of US whims of Empire and a growing Russo-Chinese alliance. If the US fails in Iraq on an economic, military, social and war-against-terrorism level, then it days as the only superpower are numbered.
Power is all about perception. Who has it and who is perceived to wield it. The impetus to turn on Syria and Israel at a time when the US is bogged down in Iraq is not merely to satisfy Israeli security needs as some would argue, but also in desperation at finding a success story to the Bushist idea of unilateral pre-emption.
Amr Musa said that invading Iraq would open the gates of hell. He was right. There are many turbulent events awaiting the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq will in years to come prove to be the single most disastrous event in modern history.
Now, let’s play devil’s advocate and pretend we are the Iranian clergy. Sine 1979, the Islamic Republic has been scrutinised, attacked, harassed, intimidated and cornered by US foreign policy and proxy Arab governments. Of course it is going to try and branch out its influence. It realises that a showdown with the US is inevitable. The US has not forgotten it lost its agent the Shah to Shia Islamic ideology.
Lebanon is another part of the chess game as is Syria. Iraq was the little threat to the US. Iran is the greater one. Just measure the heat in the war of words between the US, Iran and Israel.
Not to be taken lightly.
Just for you metal (see above). I agree with what you are saying and would point readers to the interview with the king and it’s provocative headline: King Abdullah: ‘Iraq is the Battleground — the West against Iran’. In it, king Abdullah says:
Perhaps that’s the sort of motivating factor that not only gets websites built but also gets money, motivation and perhaps Chalabi into al-Ghad. The al-Ghad story came out right after this interview.
Hubby,
First off, can you call something else just for the sake of this blog? It feels rrrrrrealllllyyy weird calling you hubby? Mayb hubz or no thats still ewww.
Anyways, the website is clearly the work of Iranian intelligence and/or its agents. Why no anti-Syrian, Iranian, Saudi or even American website.
Why Jordan? And why now? Zarqawi is allegedly Jordanian so how come nothing on him before.
Hmmm…
Quoth my sources. Chalabi and Iran.
Iran has never forgiven Jordan for siding with Iraq during the 1980-1988 war. Grudges last long in the land of the Farsis.
And then there’s this wonderful little site: http://www.no-jordan.co.nr/
This from Nur al-Cubicle following newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour (Beirut):
no