AUSTIN, Texas -- Oh good. It looks as though we're going to have
as big a fight over postwar plans for Iraq as we did over the war itself.
Just what we need, more of everybody being at everybody else's throat.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who seems prepared to run the
world, favors one Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, an
exile-emigre group, as postwar leader (read figurehead-puppet). Chalabi is
bitterly opposed by both the State Department and the CIA.
According to Knight-Ridder's Jonathan Landay, American military
planes flew Chalabi and 700 troops, the newly named "First Battalion of Free
Iraqi Forces," into Nasiriyah Sunday to be integrated into Gen. Tommy Franks
command. Landay reports, "Senior administration officials said that Chalabi
had had difficulty recruiting enough forces to go into southern Iraq and may
have tapped the discredited Badr Brigade, an Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim
group, to get his 700 soldiers." Think how happy the Iraqis will be to see
some detachment from their old enemy Iran.
Landay also reports, "It was information provided by Chalabi
that led Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to a prewar belief that Iraqis would rise up
and welcome the invading coalition with open arms, that the Republican Guard
would surrender in droves and the government of Saddam Hussein would crumble
in a matter of days."
One hesitates to make sweeping generalizations, but anyone who
has studied the history of emigre groups knows the endless infighting and
delusional quality of the emigre culture. (See if you can think of an
example.)
This gets better. Chalabi has been in exile for four decades
and, in 1992, he was convicted on multiple counts of embezzlement of
hundreds of millions of dollars in Jordan after the failure of his bank
there. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He escaped from Jordan,
reportedly in the trunk of a car, and wound up in London. Dick Cheney is
also a Chalabi fan.
The Iraqi National Congress has received millions in American
aid money, but the accounting has been very poor (a familiar story) and
quite a bit of the money is unaccounted for. Chalabi favors Savile Row
suits.
The Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz choice for "viceroy designate" of Iraq is
Gen. Jay Garner, head of the Pentagon's Office for Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance. Garner is a retired military man with links to both
the international arms industry and a Jewish lobby group. After retiring
from the Army, Garner became president of SY Coleman, a defense contractor
specializing in military defense technology. He is currently on leave of
absence from the company.
The problem of Garner's alleged Zionist sympathies is also
causing talk: He visited Israel as the guest of the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs and signed a statement in October 2000 blaming the
Palestinian Authority for the violence after the collapse of peace talks and
praising the "remarkable restraint" of the Israeli army.
The third member of the triumvirate that Rumsfeld & Co. want to
run Iraq is former CIA chief James Woolsey, who said last week that Iraq is
the opening of the "Fourth World War" (counting the Cold War as III) and
that America's enemies include the religious rulers in Iran, states like
Syria and Islamic terrorist groups.
So, we've got a crook, a Zionist and an old spy who thinks this
is the beginning of WWIV set to run Iraq. How lucky can the Iraqis get? Is
this what we thought we were fighting for?
According to David Sanger's analysis in The New York Times,
"Some hawks in the administration are convinced that Iraq will serve as a
cautionary example of what can happen to other sates that refuse to abandon
their programs to build weapons of mass destruction, an argument that John
Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control, has made several times
in recent speeches."
The administration's more pragmatic wing fears that the war's
lesson will be just the opposite: that the best way to avoid American
military action is to build a fearsome arsenal quickly and make the cost of
conflict too high for Washington.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... Sen. Ted Stevens suggested last
week that New York City's cops and firefighters should work overtime without
pay as a wartime sacrifice. "I really feel strongly that we ought to find
some way to convince the people that there ought to be some volunteerism at
home. Those people overseas in the desert -- they're not getting overtime.
... I don't know why the people working for the cities and counties ought to
be paid overtime when they're responding to matters of national security."
Stevens, R-Alaska, had just voted for tax cuts that will give those who make a million dollars a year $92,000 more to spend on polo
ponies. Some must sacrifice more than others.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
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