Betraying Feith

And certainly the White House doesn't blame him for providing the enabling lies it knowingly solicited in order to kickstart the longed-for, long-planned invasion of Iraq.

The cause of Chalabi's downfall is what he promised to the neocons about Israel — but didn't deliver.

Administration leakmeisters have whipped up a perfect storm designed to swamp Ahmad Chalabi’s canoe.

The simultaneous appearance in multiple media outlets of seemingly disparate but equally damning attacks points to Colin Powell’s masterful hand as the leaker par excellence.

Even Andrew Cockburn, who would probably be voted least likely to receive a tip-off from the Bush administration, was able to lead with a scoop in Counterpunch that Chalabi might have been fomenting a coup de etat.

The killing blow, perhaps, was a categorical story in Newsday by Knut Royce citing Defense Intelligence Agency sources and on the record spooks asserting that Chalabi’s INC Intelligence Operation was nothing more than a front for the Iran Intelligence Agency, feeding misinformation to the U.S. while funneling genuine, sensitive American dope to the hub of the Axis of Evil — and tricking us into doing the dirty work of getting rid of Saddam on their behalf.

Upon reflection, however, it does not seem to be a brilliant strategic coup for Iran to lure 135,000 troops into the region to camp on its doorstep.

Nevertheless, widespread disgust with Chalabi, his methods, the war he championed, and the Beltway interests he represents has led people to disregard the inconsistencies and ignore the more significant implications of his difficulties.

The real story of Chalabi’s troubles this time is that, with the exception of Richard Perle, the neocon front line troops — Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and company — have not poured out of their bastions to defend Chalabi against the usual array of CIA, Foggy Bottom, and uniformed Pentagon foes who have bedeviled him since the onset of Bush’s Iraq adventure.

The truth about Chalabi’s fall from Washington grace has probably already been told by John Drizard in his early-May Salon article entitled How Chalabi Conned the Neocons. In that story, Drizard documents the hatred that the Israel-oriented neocons surrounding Perle protégé Douglas Feith now feel for Chalabi.

Marc Zell partnered with Feith in a law firm before Feith was tapped by the Bush administration to become number three man at the DoD. Zell then set up a Jerusalem-based operation, Zell, Goldberg, and Co., that tried capitalize on Zell's long close relationship with Feith and the help of Chalabi’s nephew Salem to recruit clients eager for a share of Iraq reconstruction contracts.

Things don’t seem to have worked out as he hoped.

Zell told Drizard:

The neocons were apparently seduced by Chalabi’s extravagant promises not only to normalize relations between Iraq and Israel but to pump Iraq’s crude to Israel. These promises were probably no less sincere, insincere, or conditional than any other promises Chalabi made, but they turned out to be geopolitically insane.

Chalabi discovered that the center of political gravity in Iraq lay with the Shi’ites and Iran, and he abandoned his Israel-related commitments to the neocons:

Again, from Drizard:

Ouch!

Given sentiments like that, it would be no surprise that the neocons would withdraw their political protection from Chalabi.

Perhaps the crowning blow for Feith and Co. was when Chalabi’s go-to guy for Iraq graft was revealed as Hadu Faruki.

Faruki is a Jordanian who goes way back with Chalabi, back in fact to the notorious Petra Bank days of the 1980s. When Petra went belly up, it was discovered that a Faruki company had received $12 million from Petra — but didn’t have to pay it back because Petra had, in one of its last acts, forgiven the loan.

This year, Faruki’s Nour USA company, despite an utter absence of qualifications and thanks to Chalabi’s strenuous lobbying, got a $327 million military contract (rescinded at the insistence of the US military) and an $80 million pipeline security contract that reportedly netted Chalabi a $2 million finder’s fee (reported by Knut Royce in Newsday in February; somebody get that man a Pulitzer!).

Faruki is not only a Middle Eastern friend of Chalabi's.

A morning’s Googling reveals that Faruki resides in the Washington D.C. area, does a lot of business with the U.S. government, and is apparently quite well to do. He and his socialite wife Samea are major supporters of a wide range of US and Arab philanthropic endeavors and are frequently featured in Beltway social pages.

Despite their shared interests in things Chalabi, Iraq, and the Washington cocktail party circuit, Feith and Faruki appear quite incompatible, politically and ideologically.

Faruki was an appreciated donor/coffeeklatscher/state dinner attendee at the Clinton White House — and I could find no evidence he ever tossed a few bucks toward Bush and the GOP.

Faruki even made a politically gratuitous contribution of $10,000, the maximum allowed, to Clinton’s Legal Defense Fund.

To cap it all off, Faruki is a founding member of the American Task Force on Palestine , whose mission statement declares:

On the ATFP home page, there’s a nice picture of Bill Clinton presiding over the famous handshake between Yasir Arafat and Prime Minister Rabin.

Holy Judea!

Instead of dancing the hora with Arial Sharon in Jerusalem and showering Zell Goldberg with contracts, fees, and grease, Chalabi was doing his graft the old-fashioned way, with a fellow Arab and Muslim — who happens to be a supporter of Palestinian statehood and Clintonista, to boot!

No question, Ahmad was way off the reservation.

So I can understand why George W. Bush reportedly made the statesmanlike remark to Prince Abdullah of Jordan (still smarting over the catastrophe of the collapse of Chalabi’s Petra Bank) that he could “piss on” Chalabi.

Now, with the blessing of Feith and the neocons, Powell, the CIA, and the military are doing just that.

It looks more and more likely that we were hoaxed into Iraq, not by Iran, but on behalf of Israel — or what we thought Chalabi could and would do for Israel.

To avoid embarrassment and long confusing explanations that might befuddle the beautiful mind of our nation, the Bush administration and the media will stick with the Iran legend, even if Chalabi never passed the Iranians anything more incriminating than the CPA phone book.

The neocons will try to find a silver lining in the whole mess, by using the spy story to ramp up tensions with Iran another notch.

But I doubt the interests of our country will be served by refusing to recognize that high government officials dragged us into an avoidable, disastrous war in a misguided effort to promote the interests of Israel, and that they are now attempting to divert attention and condemnation from themselves to two unpopular, unsavory, and convenient scapegoats — Chalabi and Iran.

Bad Feith indeed.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.