Shorter Ayad Allawi: I’d like to be the leader of Iraq again, please. Allawi was the interim Prime Minister of Iraq from June 2004 until April 2005. Prior to that, he was member of Iraq’s Presidential Committee. He is one of the more disreputable people among the Iraqi exile community. Back in December 2003, he made an extraordinary claim in the UK Telegraph. He claimed to have unearthed a document that turned Dick Cheney from a pathological liar into a truth-teller. The document simultaneously proved that Mohammed Atta really did receive training and direction from Iraq, but also that Saddam Hussein really did procure enriched uranium from Niger.
Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at
at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.
The second part of the memo, which is headed “Niger Shipment”, contains a report about an unspecified shipment – believed to be uranium – that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq’s ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
“We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam’s involvement with al-Qaeda,” he said. “But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks.”
The idea that a document might exist that simultaneously proved an Iraq connection to 9/11 and that Niger diverted uranium to Saddam…coming in December 2003 (right before Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate l’affair Plame) was rightly regarded with extreme skepticism in the American press. Only Dick Cheney’s personal stenographer, William Safire, was dishonest enough to give it credence.
Example: Dr. Ayad Allawi, an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph last week that a memo has been found from Saddam’s secret police chief to the dictator dated July 1, 2001, reporting that the veteran terrorist Abu Nidal had been training one Mohamed Atta in Baghdad. Nobody disputes that a few months after Atta’s 9/11 suicide mission, Nidal was permanently silenced by Saddam’s police, the only “suicide” to be found with four bullets in his head.
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball quickly debunked the memo and it is largely forgotten. But Cheney did not forget, and Allawi got a promotion to his interim Prime Minister position. He quickly worked to set up an internal security service that relied heavily on former Ba’athists and made himself immensely unpopular among both Sunni and Shi’a by approving the American attacks on both Najaf and Falluja.
Allawi led the Iraqi National Accord during the January 2005 Iraqi election. His campaign was mainly characterised by his attempt to improve his image, which had been seriously damaged as a result of his many unpopular decisions. His campaign reached a low point when he visited the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf on December 4, 2004, where a group of angry shia worshipers hurled their shoes at him. Later on, in a face saving statement, Allawi claimed that it was an assassination attempt, a claim that brought him much ridicule from Iraqis.
The INA polled a distant third, with 14% of the vote, suggesting a lack of domestic support for Allawi’s rule. This was probably due to, among other factors, his past membership in the Baath party, numerous allegations of corruption and of financial fraud when he was prime minister (arrest warrants have been issued for ministers in his administration), and a real perception among Iraqis, both Shia and Sunni, that he has a somewhat thuggish character, reminiscent of Saddam Hussein.
So, it should concern us that he has taken to the Washington Post this morning to detail a new plan for Iraq. His main conclusion is that we need a coup.
Prime Minister Maliki has squandered Iraq’s credibility in Arab politics, and he cannot restore it…
…Maliki has stalled the passage of legislation, proposed in March, to reverse de-Baathification. That proposal should be passed immediately…
It is past time for change at the top of the Iraqi government. Without that, no American military strategy or orderly withdrawal will succeed, and Iraq and the region will be left in chaos.
And, the money quote?
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has failed to take advantage of the Iraqi people’s desire for peaceful and productive lives and of the enormous commitment and sacrifices made by the United States and other nations…
…I am working with my colleagues in parliament to build a nonsectarian majority coalition that will support the following six-point plan for a “new era” in Iraq and replace through democratic means the current Iraqi government.
You can take that part about ‘through democratic means’ with whatever portion of salt you deem necessary. I suggest a pillar. It seems clear that Dick Cheney is pulling the strings on this puppet…and Maliki’s term must be nearing its end.
Despite his Ba’athist past and sympathies, Ayad Allawi is still nominally a Shi’ite. But he is a pro-western Shi’ite and an Arab nationalist. Cheney tried to impose Allawi as the solution once before. It seems he is going back to the same oasis for a second try.
Also available in orange.
Maliki should be looking over his shoulder. The U.S.(Cheney) wants Maliki snuffed then installs Allawi as an emergency Prime Minister. What is in the Iraqi constitiution about the passing of power? He may have to pitch that.
Once Maliki is out of the way U.S.(Cheney) can move on the Shiites(Iran) without Maliki being obstructionist. Remember he said Iran is being “constructive” with respect to Iraq. U.S. now wants to get rid of the people to whom it handed power (Maliki, Shiites, Iran). Install an Iraqi puppet(Allawi) and pretend the elections never happened.
At least thats what they would like to do. Being really shortsighted is indistinguishable from anarchy.
mr. allawi is certainly a piece of work…let’s see:
founding member of the iraqi national accord,, which, it appears, was founded …on the initiative of Saudi Prince Turki ibn Faysal, with the support of the CIA, and Jordanian and British agencies…, and considered to be responsible for much of the false information regarding saddam’s [non-existant] wmd stockpiles and ambitions used in the pre-war BushCo™ propaganda;
closely linked to ahmed chalabi…nuff said;
allegedly summarily executed six suspected insurgents at a baghdad police station…a charge that, of course, has been denied, though never proved nor disproved.
cheney’s kind of guy.
lTMF’sA
Made me think of A. Chalabi also and wonder where that crook is right now.(up to no good I’m sure)
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≈ Cross-posted from my diary — The Surge: A Special Report ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
The quotation in the Financial Times attributed to Danielle Pletka, the Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), was a stunner. “If we … begin to sanction foreign companies through more stringent sanctions in the Iran Sanctions Act, I think there will be serious repercussions for our multilateral effort.”
Whatever would possess AEI and Pletka, who personally has been one of the most prominent and enthusiastic cheerleaders of the rapidly spreading state divestment movement against companies doing business in Iran, to offer a cautionary note about adopting unilateral sanctions, let alone stress the importance of preserving multilateral unity with limp-wristed European allies in dealing with a charter member of the “Axis of Evil”? Judging from its provenance at what must be considered Neo-Con Central, it certainly couldn’t be common sense.
In fact, Pletka’s observation probably reflects growing tensions between AEI’s corporate contributors, many of whom are represented on its board of trustees, on the one hand, and, on the other, the hard-line neo-conservative views of its foreign-policy fellows, such as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Joshua Muravchik, and Pletka herself; academic advisers, such as Gertrude Himmelfarb, Eliot Cohen and Jeremy Rabkin; and its board chairman Bruce Kovner.
As one of the four co-founders of the AEI’s twin, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in September, 1962, my experience suggests that the apparent conflict between the funders and the funded at AEI reflects in part the difference between the dollar bottom line of the funders and the ideological bottom line of AEI’s professional foreign policy geeks. The funders are tacticians, whereas the funded view themselves as strategists with a different time frame. In fact, perhaps without knowing it, the corporate funders may have a sounder strategy for the future of civilization.
The blindness of both those who fund the NeoCons and those NeoCons who are funded is evident in the current rage of the oil industry executives over the nearly unanimnous support by Iraqi politicians of the current “stalling” in approving the future ownership of Iraqi oil.
The question is, whether the meltdown of Iraqi society and economic inrastructure can be a precursor of paradigmatic revolution, as suggested in my recent article in The American Muslim.
From a really long-range global perspective of what is in the enlightened interests of America, the latest good news in the Iraq oil imbroglio is the growing Iraqi insistence that the law on sharing revenues among Iraqis must come before the broader law on sharing revenues with foreigners.
Info Robert D. Crane
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."