Ahmed Chalabi Redux

The once disgraced intel fabricator Ahmed Chalabi wined and dined with the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld. Why?

He’s hoping to change the way U.S. troops operate in Iraq, according to Arianna Huffington.

From Reuters:

Democratic lawmakers have demanded to know why Chalabi was meeting top U.S. officials after allegations he had passed American secrets to Iran and they urged congressional committees to subpoena him for testimony.
…….
A senior U.S. defense official said Rumsfeld and Chalabi discussed the importance of protecting Iraq’s oil and electric power grids from insurgent attacks and improving intelligence-gathering by U.S.-led military forces in Iraq.

Perhaps, now that he is Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, perhaps he is just hoping to get a better handle on using Coalition troops for his own purposes.

Or, perhaps, as National Review’s Byron York told Hardball’s Chris Matthews (HT: Think Progress):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Why is the Vice President and other administration officials like Rumsfeld seeming to reject the notion that this guy [Chalabi] is full of it?

BYRON YORK: A couple of reasons. One, he is now a high ranking Iraqi official…. And the other thing is, look, I think there are a lot of people in the administration who still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction somewhere that they were spirited away or in some way not found.

Christopher Hitchens breaks down why the gov’t has to accept being fooled as such:
It was, of course, the sinuous and dastardly forces of Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress who persuaded the entire Senate to take leave of its senses in 1998…. The INC was able to manipulate the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, who between them employ perhaps 1.4 million people, and who in the American case dispose of an intelligence budget of $44 billion, with only a handful of Iraqi defectors and an operating budget of $320,000 per month. That’s what you have to believe.

Rep. Henry Waxman writes that he thinks Chalabi should be questioned under oath while he’s in town: Now four years later, Mr. Chalabi has stated that his objective in Iraq ?has been achieved.? Now installed as Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Mr. Chalabi says that ?what was said before,? his half-truths and false statements, ?is not important.?

Who exactly is after them?

Now, Saddam’s former right-hand man has been slain. Or, perhaps, he just died. On CBC Radio’s “As it Happens,” an advisor to Saddam Hussein was incredibly forceful and defensive with host Mary Lou Lindsay, claiming that the US and Chalabi’s men are after Saddam’s lawyers so that NOBODY will be willing to stand witness for the defense.

Listen to the broadcast from Thursday, 10 November. Abdul Haq al-Ami is a legal advisor to the Hussein family.

At the very least, a red flag is raised by these meetings and the fact that they are being shielded from the press. David Corn of the Nation wonders what else is being covered up in his blog.

Chalabi himself, claims that its a big urban myth that he’s to blame for false WMD intel in thisi week’s TIME: The Robb-Silberman report said we had minimum impact on WMD intelligence as it related to the U.S. decision to go to war.