The incomparable
driftglass rouses me from my retirement and demands that his pearls of wisdom be quoted in their entirety. He
gets it...!
Has anyone here seen my old friend Ahmad?
Sure it seems silly to even bother mentioning Chalabi any more. I mean, he's a joke, right?
Zero credibility. A proven liar. Convicted in absentia in Jordan for massive fraud.
But for some mysterious reason, The Fraud abides.
He was, after all:
...interim oil minister in Iraq[1] in April-May 2005 and December-January 2006.
and...deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006.
And today he remains in Iraq, still working the press, trying to argue that his conviction in Jordan was,
'...part of a vast conspiracy against him, alleging that the Jordanian Central Bank and its officials "combined and conspired to destroy" him. He also said that his bank, which had a U.S. affiliate called PIBC, had been wrongfully seized, and that Jordan had in 1989 planned to hand him over to Saddam Hussein.'
And we also know that Conservatives, far from exiling their degenerates and criminals, simply wait a few months or years until the press gets distracted by another runaway blond or Shark!Attack!, and then recycles them.
So however disgraced and humiliated they may have been as... sleazy serial liars, convicted felons, and traitors or outright sociopaths...
...members of the Conservative Ruling Caste can always look forward to a new suit of clothes and new careers helping to kneecap American democracy as radio hosts, directors of domestic spying, or even Presidents.
And after nearly seven years of epic disaster and flagrant disregard for his oath of office, what do we know about Dick Cheney?
- That he has nothing but contempt for the Constitution and the good order and discipline of the United States government.
- A serial liar and war criminal who hacks up falsehoods as unselfconsciously as my cat licks her ass.
- Once he gets the bit in his teeth, nothing turns him around. Uncooperative government? Overthrow it. Inconvenient law? Break it. Inviolable democratic principle? Shit on it.
- And the Cheney Plan for Iraq...
- Deliberately unleash chaos and keep adding accelerant to the conflagration until Hell on Earth is loosed.
- Use the fog of war and the bright lights of the whore-media to help loot the valuable bits and get your cronies rich in the process.
- Convert the entire country (except for the US Embassy) into a crusader's latrine: make the life of the average Iraqi so unbearable that it spawns a whole new generation of enemies. And make sure every inch of their tragedy it is stamped with bright, neon signs reading "Made In America" so they all know who to blame.
- Point to the enemies his Plan has manufactured as proof that we need to smash more of the region to atoms.
- Do it all with other people's money and other people's children.
...is coming along brilliantly.
Even the Play-At-Home Edition the Administration is operating in New Orleans is working out fabulously, and for pretty much the same reasons: the Base of the Republican Party does not give a shit about Those People.
Those Brown People.
Whether they live or die. Whether they're halfway around the world or in their own back yard. The Base doesn't have the slightest grasp of the responsibilities of being a genuine citizenship, a real Christian or an adult sentient being. They know only the hazy, terrifying dimensions of the swarthy bogey men they have been told forever stalk them, scheming tirelessly to tax away their hard-earned money (fear of "socialism"), fuck their woman (fear of "integration") or blow up their children (fear of fear itself).
They have no capacity to think outside of the parameters of their hate and fear for Brown People (And uppity women, liberals and gays), and can therefore be relied on to back the Bad against the Good every fucking time.
Consider this little nugget that passed almost uncommented on in the rip tide of lies that routinely come out of the White House (emphasis added):
August 31, 2007
Panel Will Urge Broad Overhaul of Iraqi Police
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 — An independent commission established by Congress to assess Iraq’s security forces will recommend remaking the 26,000-member national police force to purge it of corrupt officers and Shiite militants suspected of complicity in sectarian killings, administration and military officials said Thursday.
The commission, headed by Gen. James L. Jones, the former top United States commander in Europe, concludes that the rampant sectarianism that has existed since the formation of the police force requires that its current units “be scrapped” and reshaped into a smaller, more elite organization, according to one senior official familiar with the findings. The recommendation is that “we should start over,” the official said.
...
Got it?
In September of 2007, the National Iraqi Police force has 26,000 members. And is so deeply compromised that the general leading the independent commission charged with evaluating its effectiveness reports that it needs to “be scrapped”.
And what we were told almost exactly six friedmans ago, during the 2004 Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates?
Dubya on September 30, 2004:
"Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job.
"And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year. That is the best way. We'll never succeed in Iraq if the Iraqi citizens do not want to take matters into their own hands to protect themselves. I believe they want to. Prime Minister Allawi believes they want to."
And again...
"There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol. There's going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year. Yes, we're getting the job done. It's hard work. Everybody knows it's hard work, because there's a determined enemy that's trying to defeat us.
And Cheney, on October 2, 2004:
We've made significant progress in Iraq. We've stood up a new government that's been in power now only 90 days. The notion of additional troops is talked about frequently, but the point of success in Iraq will be reached when we have turned governance over to the Iraqi people; they have been able to establish a democratic government. They're well on their way to doing that. They will have free elections next January for the first time in history.
We also are actively, rapidly training Iraqis to take on the security responsibility.
Those two steps are crucial to success in Iraq. They're well in hand, well under way. And I'm confident that, in fact, we'll get the job done.
As sure and adamant as Cheney and Bush were about WMD in 2002 and 2003, they were that flat and categorical about progress in Iraq in 2004.
In 2004 we were told that we should calm the fuck down and re-elect President Stupid because the Dubya Administration had this shit under control; that 125,000 police, guard, special units, border patrol were cocked, locked and ready to Iraq.
And by the end of 2005, we were going to have 200,000.
Shit, just run teh maths out to 2007 and by now we should be closing in on half a million. In other words, a force the size of the Iraq Army before the Cheney Plan disbanded them and turned them into armed insurgents.
People who doubted those numbers and the credibility of those touting them were dismissed as disloyal or Bush-Deranged.
Instead, three years later, we find that have spent God alone knows how much blood and treasure to create a force less than 10% that size.
And that we now have to slag it and start from scratch.
But instead of outrage over being lied to -- instead screaming for blood over being punked by the same monsters again and again and again and again and again -- the pig people still loyally crouch in their smelly, little stalls in the GOP Men's Room With Benefits, obediently tapping their hooves and begging to be fucked over one more time.
Meanwhile, the cheap paint and sawdust of legitimacy we slathered onto our latest iteration of the Iraqi government is starting to flake off in huge chunks, and the wingnut purple finger brigade now talks causally and openly about tossing them over the side and wiring up of someone who is even more of a Bush Administration Muppet.
And at the end of this long, bloody trail Occam's Razor waits.
At each step along the way, the Administration has unhesitatingly lied to get us in even deeper.
At each step along the way, the Administration has unhesitatingly slandered and smeared anyone who pointed out their history of being wrong about everything every time.
And as we have been led deeper into disaster -- from planning, to troops levels, to policing, to infrastructure, to dissolving the Iraqi Army -- at every critical step this Administration has cavalierly dismissed and overruled the advice of professionals and made whichever decision would maximize misery, terror and and Halliburton shareholder value.
All to the thunderous applause of the Pig People.
Do I really-really think it'll be Chalabi?
Not literally, but if it were announced next January it honestly would not surprise me. Because Chaos has always been the Cheney Plan for Iraq. And while I make no claim to special knowledge of what's coming, I know this:
- Whether your star rises or falls in the Court of Emperor Dubya has nothing to do with how smart or competent or able you are. In fact, those traits are in impediment. Your fortunes wax or wane depending entirely on how dog-loyal you are to the House of Bush, and how hard you are willing to push the Neocon Narrative in the face of Reality.
Oh, and that you are NOT GAY.
- The next act of Dubya's Iraqi Debacle will be just like all of the preceding acts; an all-out blitz of a retooled version of the same old lies.
- The Administration will soon be shopping for an Iraqi Strong Man they can work with. Someone into whose eyes Dubya can claim to have looked before slurring through the thousandth rendition his "he's a good man" speech.
- The same Mighty Wurlitzer that can make a dry-drunk, frat-rat sadist and failure into a President and drive the last superpower on Earth into an endless, disastrous and unnecessary war against the wrong fucking country can surely slap a new coat of varnish on any Neocon-friendly fuckup and mount him on a white horse long enough for the next New, New Plan to be announced.
- Whatever the form the New Plan take -- whatever smoke and dazzle it comes packed in -- in substance it will have the effect of steadily advancing Dick Cheney's Final Solution to the Iraq Problem.
And as a Neocon-artist who has proved again and again to be a man of limitless ambitions and limited conscience, no one is better suited to that role than Dick's old pal Ahmad C.
