Chalabi: Straight-Shooting Iraqi Insider Or Genius Statesman?

Jim Hoagland just noticed that insurgents in Iraq are waging an increasingly sophisticated campaign to destroy infrastrcuture and thereby public faith in the interim government. I guess they keep him in a little box in DC, normally, kind of like the Gimp.

Instead of set battles, the insurgents mount terrorist spectaculars -- coordinated bombings and attacks on civilians -- and have moved from hitting "random targets of opportunity to sophisticated planning with strategic and tactical objectives against specific high-value targets," according to a recent analysis by a private security firm in Iraq.

They've been lining his cage with really old editions of the Post they've got lying around; I think they just put some from 2004 in there. But he does have a phone. And Ahmed Chalabi's number:

"We have been able to increase production of electricity, but we can't get the increases to consumers because of sabotage," Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi told me by telephone from Baghdad last week. "The power grid is now a primary target for the Baathists."...

Chalabi -- the target a year ago of accusations of treason and chicanery leveled in the press by anonymous U.S. officials whom he had apparently antagonized -- has survived that smear campaign and emerged as a key policymaker in Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's government. Chalabi today works smoothly with U.S. commanders on his primary portfolio: infrastructure protection....

Chalabi landed in hot water with the American overseers of occupation in part because of his abrasive insistence that they did not understand Iraqi culture and priorities well enough to make those kinds of distinctions -- and refused to listen to Iraqis who did.

He declined to discuss the constitution when we spoke on Wednesday, and went out of his way to praise U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for his low-key support for the drafting process. But Chalabi's original point -- that Iraqis are ready to choose their own form of government and leaders -- was unnecessarily put at risk once again by the White House.

This is just some of the most unadulterated bullshit I have ever read. Why is everyone so hot on setting up a Shiite theocracy friendly to Iran now? Is this some kind of super-secret thing all the cool kids are into? I---erg. What really occurs to me is that Chalabi must be one incredibly smooth-talking fellow. Of course, if you're locked in a box and only get to talk to one person ever, I guess he would seem pretty welcome.

Comments

[Mandos]

They're into it because they have no choice. When they destroyed all of the country's political and governmental infrastructure (minus the Oil Ministry, which can't do anything anyway), they paved the way for the worst of the opposition groups, which are Khomeinite and organized. The secular opposition (and other secular institutions) has been neutralized.

[Keith]

These are the same folk trying to institute a relgious theocracy in the US, so clearly they have no problem with it.