Perhaps you haven't heard of Ahmad Chalabi. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, he headed an Iraqi exile group called the Iraqi National Congress. Before that, he was an indicted bank swindler in Jordon, from where he escaped and headed here. He took the money he stole, headed to Washington, and set up his little exile group as a lobbying firm. The person he lobbied was our Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney loved what Chalibi was saying so much, he put this man on the U.S. payroll at the tune of $300,000 a month salary. What was Mr. Chalibi telling Mr. Cheney that was so sweet?

1) He knew where the WMDs where and knew Saaddam was building A-Bombs, and could take us to them

2) His INC had a huge underground militia in Iraq that would rise up when we attacked

3) He knew the people of Iraq would great us as liberators

Unfortunately, he was also a consummate liar and con man, and our VP the consummate sucker. His real plan was to become the next Saddam Hussien, thanks to the help of our rube Vice President. It is these two men who got us into this mess, the Giant Mess o' Potamia. He is also probably an Iranian spy. People actually told Mr. Cheney this months and months ago. He didn't care. In fact, he kept him on his payroll until two weeks ago, finally dumping him probably when the CIA told him Chalibi was about to be arrested as a traitor:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120535,00.html

You can read all about how our incompetent VP got us suckered
into an unnecessary war at: (note how long ago it was written)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3475064/site/newsweek/

Are we fignting the War In Iraq, or the Great Suckers War? Whose the biggest chump - Cheney or the American Taxpayer?

Oh, I remember this guy. He was the main man on the U.S. payroll in regard to all of the bulls*** information from Iraqi expatriates. The guy definitely smells of slime -- I didn't realize he was this ambitious.

__________________
Ron
German Star

I think you’re off on that $300,000 figure. I think it’s $350,000 a week and is for the militia he maintained. It’s just been cut off. While looking for the data I ran across this written in the fall of2002

Striking Oil
It's hard to overstate the importance of Iraqi oil. With proven reserves of 112 billion barrels (and many analysts saying that its true reserves are double that), Iraq sits above the second largest supply of oil in the world. Its crippled industry can produce only 2 million barrels of oil a day at present, but with a modest effort, Iraq's output could soar to as high as 7 million to 8 million barrels per day by decade's end. Controlling that much oil would give the United States enormous leverage over Europe and Japan, which depend heavily on Gulf oil; over Russia, whose economy is hinged to the price of its oil exports, which could be manipulated by an American-run Iraq; and over Saudi Arabia, whose regime's survival is linked to oil. "The American oil companies are going to be the main beneficiaries of this war," says Akins. "We take over Iraq, install our regime, produce oil at the maximum rate and tell Saudi Arabia to go to hell." "It's probably going to spell the end of OPEC," says JINSA's Bryen.

The INC is quietly courting the American oil companies. In mid-October, Chalabi had a series of meetings with three major U.S. oil firms in Washington. "The oil people are naturally nervous," says INC spokesman Zaab Sethna, who took part in the meetings between Chalabi and the oil executives. "We've had discussions with them, but they're not in the habit of going around talking about them." That's true. In interviews, oil company officials speak cautiously and only on background about Iraq, laughing nervously at the idea of being quoted. They are extremely wary of associating themselves with the INC or with U.S. war plans for fear of angering Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf…………..
......The INC and its backers make no bones about the fact that the American forces gathering to attack Iraq will be liberating Iraq's oil. Unable to restrain himself, Chalabi blurted to The Washington Post that the INC intends to reward its American friends. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," he proclaimed.

Meanwhile, economists allied with the INC -- including strategists at the Heritage Foundation, the AEI and JINSA -- are abuzz with plans to "denationalize" the Iraqi oil industry and then distribute it to Western, mostly American, companies. In late September, in "The Future of a Post-Saddam Iraq: A Blueprint for American Involvement," the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen put forward a nearly complete scheme for the privatization of Iraq's oil, creating three separate companies for southern Iraq, the region around Baghdad and the Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq, with additional companies to operate pipelines and refineries and to develop Iraq's natural gas.......

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"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

I heard the 300k a month figure on CNN. Whatever he was getting, it was a bundle, and it was a scam. If this guy gets charged as an Iranian spy, this is going to explode. It means Cheney put a spy from one of our worst enemies on the US payroll and gave him access to the top levels of both the Pentagon and the Whitehouse. That is incredible, if true.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/20/iraq/main618637.shtml

This, from that articel, is unbelievable:

The evidence shows that Chalabi personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, "get Americans killed." The evidence is said to be "rock solid."

Sources have told Stahl a high-level investigation is underway into who in the U.S. government gave Chalabi such sensitive information in the first place.

In addition, sources told Stahl that one of Chalabi's closest confidantes — a senior member of his organization, the Iraqi national congress — is believed to have been recruited by Iran's intelligence agency, the Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) — and is on their payroll.

There is good reason to think that Cheney might be a rube. When Halliburton made him a multimillionaire, he apparently thought it was because he is so unbelievably brilliant. Remember, his comment in the 2000 VP debates? He said that his private sector success had nothing to do with the federal government. While at the helm at Halliburton, what were his accomplishments? I know of two: (1) he brought in humungous amounts of government contract work; and (2) he oversaw the purchase of Dresser Industries. From his shareholders' perspective, item (1) was a very good thing. Item (2)? Not so good because the main thing that Dresser brought to the party was a big, fat asbestos liability. Yeah, that Dick is a real operator.

Is the Chalabi fiasco further evidence of Cheney's rubeness? It would seem so. On the other hand, Chalabi helped get Cheney what he wanted - a war in Iraq. So it is hard to say.

You guys truly amaze me, honestly you really do. I really have no clue how you guys think, I'm positive that you're both big Clinton Gore supporters whish as we all well know did absolutely nothing substantive about terrorism and you criticize those who do.

Maybe, just maybe this war on terror is an untested unknown doctrine of war and the planners are figuring it out as they go because there is no precedent to this type of war.

The way wars are fought changed the day a civilian airliner crashed into the WTC on 9-11-2001, both of your post makes two things loud and clear.

1. your seething anger clouds reality.
2. both of you have absolutely no conception on how warfare works, i suggest watching war stories or the discovery channel to get a grip on how military doctrine is conceived.

If you want to talk about scandals lets find out where the Billions of dollars went from the oil for food program under the Clinton admins watch.

Ah yes, the old "9/11 changed everything" approach. W and the boys have been getting good mileage from that one. 9/11 changed things so much that now, apparently, it is a good thing to be snookered by con men like Chalabi, even when his reputation as a con man was established years earlier.

Oliver North's show? Please, please, tell me you are kidding. I know that I tend to throw around words like "clown", "liar", "rube" and all that, but my goodness. Oliver North might be the biggest clown yet. We know he is a liar. Lying is, literally, how he built his fortune. I don't know whether you followed his run for Senate. It was the most dishonest bunch of crap you ever saw.

Look, you can freak out all you want, but there are plenty of very well informed military people who agree with everything I have said. Does that make me right? No. But I reject your claim to being the holder of all truth about warfare.

I am no expert on the military, but decency and common sense tell me that Bush's foreign policy is a disaster.

By the way, the History Channel had a great program on the other night about how the Soviet Union built about 60,000 T34 tanks while they were trying to fight off Hitler's invasion in the early 40's. It is amazing that the Soviets had the dedication to pull that off, even after Stalin's purges killed so many of their countrymen. It says something about them. (Does that make me a communist?)

Not sure that the Discovery channel is going to give me a "grip" on military doctrine, but I do watch an awful lot of it.

Anyhow, should this prove to be true (and that's a big should), this would continue to erode the reasons for going to war in Iraq and confidence in the Bush administration's competence. In the meantime, I'll reserve judgement on this until we have some source other than Lesley Stahl confirm it. This rumor if true would be such a colossal blunder so I'm going to wait for real sources. If it is true I feel confident we'll find out soon enough.

dculkin,

No because there was a good dose of american know-how that contributed to Russia's capability to pull that off. I didn't get a chance to watch the whole thing, but as I understand it, the Germans couldn't replicate the T34 because of inferior smelting methods compared to those the Russians used which were imported from the USA. I was amazed at the 60 tanks a day figure! Wow.

True, but give credit where credit is due. I couldn't believe that Soviets actually tore down factories, moved them east to get away from the Nazis, and then started turning out 60 tanks a day. Actually, my 60,000 figure was the total number of T34's ever built. Even so, it was one hell of an accomplishment to build them as quickly as they did.

I love the quote they gave from Hitler. He said that if he had known the Russians had that many tanks he would that thought twice about invading. How classic is that?

Who was responsible for US/Soviet cooperation back then? I knew we were allies, but did not know we worked so closely with them. It's a damn good thing we did. Of course, now that 9/11 has changed everything, international cooperation is a thing of the past. Don't need that anymore. No sirree.

At first, I was surprised that our steel technology was so superior to German technology. Upon reflection, though, it occurs to me that we have always been as good or better than the rest of the world when it comes to high-end technology. It is at the consumer product level where our technology has lagged. Our deficiencies have been in management and priorities, not in our technology.

Yes there is. Its called "Vietnam"

This thread is a legitimate question of the quality of our leadership. We are putting a very difficult question to the forum, which in a democracy, needs to be discussed. Each of us has a responsibilty in the choice of our leaders and free discussion by all is an essential part of that. I am proposing that one of our top leaders is a man who gets mislead easily because he only hears what he wants to hear instead of seeking the truth to the point he puts us in danger as a nation, and therefore, he should not be leading it.

Its ironic you accuse others of being angry when what was really just a thread of current news reports and an opinion the the VP is a rube brought such an angry response from you. If I was going to judge something in this thread that "seethed with anger" it would have been your post.

The Big Should gets littler by the hour, from Fox, not Leslie:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120535,00.html

What does it have in common with vietnam?

Why is it that when I read some of these posts I'm reminded of a spoon caught in my garbage disposal?


and I was being sarcastic about the history channel and war stories.........get it.

1) A war requiring occupation of a country that doesn't want us there.

2) A war with no clear concept of what "winning" means

3) A war fought by a divided nation

4) A war which constantly expands in needs of lives and cash

5) A war with very little support from the international community

I am sure others can add more.