“Tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. It’s…you’re…you’re a…you’ve been given sovereignty…… (mp3)
Listen to journalists break out in laughter as Bush tries to explain what “sovereignty” is.
(Links via Daily Kos and Majority Report Radio)
Chalabi’s counterfeit currency swap
Juan Cole, discussing the arrest warrant out for Ahmed Chalabi asks, “He was charged with counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars (why not counterfeit new dinars if you were going to counterfeit?) and money-laundering.”
Chalabi counterfeited Iraqi dinars and exchanged them for new dinars during the currency swap, when the CPA replaced the old dinar with the new one. From Jason Vest:
Perhaps the most interesting strand of the investigation involves one Sabbah Nouri, an INC official whom Chalabi had installed in the Ministry of Finance earlier this year — and who’s virtually the star of a front-page story in today’s generally Chalabi-friendly New York Sun.
Nouri has not been a particularly high-profile figure, but he could end up being the demolition man for Chalabi’s political aspirations and the INC. Identified in a January 13 broadcast of the Voice of the Mujahideen (the short-wave program of the Shia Supreme Islamic Council for Revolution in Iraq) as the “director of the finance minister’s office,” Nouri popped up in a March 11 Washington Post story about millions of missing Iraqi dinars from Iraqi banks.
After Iraqis traded their old dinars for new ones late last year, a Finance Ministry bank audit revealed a $22 million gap. According to the Post, the Finance Ministry quickly rounded up scores of bank tellers, whom it accused of accepting counterfeit scrip or outright theft. Though lawyers for the accused noted that suspects extended beyond tellers, Nouri, identified as “head of the Finance Ministry’s bank audit committee,” asserted that “it was impossible that anyone but the cashiers could have inserted forged bills or taken some of the money,” adding that “in the past, employees did not have any respect for law. We want to teach people this respect.”
Nouri returns to the pages of the Post today (May 21) — which fails to reference its earlier story — and is now identified as being “at the center of the inquiry” into “a scheme to defraud the Iraqi government during the transition to a new currency.” According to the Post, Nouri was “arrested in April and faces 17 charges including extortion, fraud, embezzlement, theft of government property and abuse of authority.”
Similarly, the Times identifies Nouri as having been “arrested on corruption allegations that include stealing a dozen cars from the [Finance] Ministry” and standing accused of “theft, extortion, kidnapping and murder.”
But the most thorough description of the Nouri investigation comes — perhaps somewhat surprisingly — in a front-page story Friday in the neocon’s paper of record, The New York Sun.
According to that report, Nouri has told Iraqi investigators that “Mr Chalabi’s organization instructed him to strong-arm bureaucrats and steal government property.” Citing Nouri’s arrest date as March 24, the story also reveals that his charges include “coerc[ing] confessions from bank tellers” in the dinar investigation, and that when arrested, he attempted to extricate himself by invoking the name of Aras Habib, the INC’s intelligence director.
From the Sunday Times, May 31, 2004:
The way judge Zuhair Maleki related the story last week, a routine investigation into a giant currency fiddle eventually led to a heavily guarded Baghdad compound belonging to Ahmad Chalabi, the former London banker whose high-level US connections had eased him into a prominent role on the interim Iraqi Governing Council.
As the chief investigative judge of Iraq’s central criminal court, Maleki was in charge of a curious case involving one of Chalabi’s minions. Sabah Nouri, described by Maleki as a “former driver and smuggler with no qualifications”, had been appointed to head an audit committee at the Iraqi finance ministry, which fell under Chalabi’s council wing.
When evidence emerged that old dinars sent for burning were being switched with counterfeit bills – and that the genuine dinars were being represented in exchange for more dollars – Nouri apparently set off in hot pursuit of culprits.
This seemingly innocuous investigation into alleged currency fraud ultimately led Iraqi police to kick down the door to Chalabi’s home, rousing him from his bed and provoking a startling political row over whether the man the Pentagon once regarded as its best friend in Iraq was spying for Iran.
The tangled tale of Nouri’s currency shenanigans and Chalabi’s supposed dealings with Tehran reflects much that has gone wrong with the coalition effort in Iraq.
Under the pressure of the approaching June 30 deadline for the handover to civilian rule in Baghdad, Iraqi factions are scrambling for power almost as furiously as rival branches of the US administration are blaming each other for the mess. No one seems to agree on who is friend or foe.
According to Maleki and other sources, Nouri responded to reports of the currency fiddle by storming into several Baghdad banks and seizing female tellers suspected of skimming profits. Nouri “roughed up the girls, abused them verbally and dragged them out of the banks”, said Maleki. “He violated and exceeded his powers.”
When Maleki followed up complaints that the bank tellers had been kidnapped, the scam began to unravel. After weeks of further investigation, the judge concluded that Nouri and other Chalabi aides had in fact been running the counterfeit currency switch.
The question is, why now? Why both Chalabis?
UPDATE: Lew Rockwell on the LRC blog: It was fun to hear Chalabi interviewed by FOX, which holds that this great man is being persecuted for his anti-UN virtues. When asked about the charge of counterfeiting old (i.e. Saddam) dinars, Chalabi said it was an outrageous and politically motivated charge, and besides, “the amount was trivial.”
Wanted: Ahmad and Salem Chalabi
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ A judge says Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Chalabi (AHK’-mahd SHAH’-lah-bee), a former governing council member, on money laundering charges.
And Iraq’s chief investigating judge says a warrant has been issued for Salem Chalabi (SAH’-lem CHAH’-lah-bee), the head of Iraq’s special tribunal, on murder charges.
I have no idea who this “judge” is or if it is The Puppets behind these charges or the US, so this is FYI only.
US Chopper down near Sadr City
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Insurgents show off a part taken from a U.S. Army OH-58 helicopter that made an emergency landing north of Baghdad on Sunday. |
A U.S. Army OH-58 helicopter made an emergency landing in eastern Baghdad on Sunday, the military said. There were no reports of casualties.
The chopper made “a precautionary landing” just north of Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, said Maj. Phil Smith.
It was not known if the helicopter had been fired upon.
“Both pilots are fine and we’re in the process of recovering the aircraft,” Smith told The Associated Press. “They landed the aircraft safely just north of Sadr City.”
While running this la-di-da, no big deal report, the photo to the left showing armed Iraqi insurgents holding a helicopter part is included. Is it just me, or does this picture clash with the tone of the military spokesman’s statement?
Partisan Blundering
Zbigniew Brzezinski points to two Bush administration “blunders” which have “precipitate[d] the increasingly intense hatred for the US, not only in the Middle East but in the Islamic world at large.” In both instances, it “adopted a stance that was not only unilateral and lacking international support but was perceived by the Muslims of the region as violently repressive, lacking in fairness and justified mainly by stretching or distorting the truth.”
The first of these “Bush” blunders was the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003; the second was the “unqualified support” for Israel’s “violent dismantling of the Palestinian Authority” a year earlier.
Yes, Bush referred to “Sharon as ‘a man of peace,'” but it was an almost unanimous Congress that took the lead in endorsing “Operation Defensive Shield.” As Mary McGrory put it, Republican Whip Tom Delay “cleaned up the floor with his unaccustomed allies, the liberals.” In the senate, “Democratic leader Tom Daschle announced the restiveness among his horses, who were hot to trot for Israel.”
Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions considers that congressional vote one of the “good reasons” the Sharon government has for “believ[ing] it has defeated the Palestinians once and for all.”
Russ Feingold and the late Paul Wellstone, liberal darlings here in the Midwest, were among the “hot to trot.” So were John Edwards and of course John Kerry, who recently expressed his pride in having “co-sponsored a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel” when it had just “dismantle[d] the Palestinian infrastructure.”
While Brzezinski’s piece is welcome, he undercuts his credibility by glossing over the fact that the whole political establishment is a blunderer and in particular that Anyone But Bush is proud to be a blunderer.
In related matters, I’m proud I haven’t seen “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Here’s a chance to “Urge Michael Moore to make his next film about the US and Israel.” And here’s one to support the Presbyterian divestment initiative.”
Saturday Blog Tour
Juan Cole asks, Did the Bush Administration Burn a Key al-Qaeda Double Agent? It appears that they did: ““Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff of Reuters reveal the explosive information that the Bush administration blew the cover Monday of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.” Cole also speculates on Ayatollah Sistani’s “heart trouble”:
One problem with an all-out attack on the Mahdi Army was that it might endanger the life of, or meet opposition from, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He was therefore spirited out of Najaf on the pretext that he had heart problems. But Al-Zaman reports today that Sistani stopped off in Beirut on his way to London, where he met with moderate Shiite leader Nabih Berri of the AMAL party, who serves as Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament. Sistani then went on to London, but is not in hospital and won’t be for at least a week. This story just does not square with him being so ill that he had to be airlifted to London for emergency heart treatment. It would not have been easy for al-Zurufi and the Americans to convince Sistani to leave, but they could have simply shared with him their plans to have an all-out war in Najaf, and told him they could not protect him. That would have left him no choice but to leave. If you think about it, he could not possibly have been gotten out of Najaf to Beirut and London without US military assistance, though he flew a private plane from Baghdad airport.
I think this analysis is likely true, as I insinuated here yesterday.
Riverbend checks in for the first time in over a month:
Is there sympathy with all these abductees? There is. We hate seeing them looking frightened on television. We hate thinking of the fact that they have families and friends who worry about them in distant countries and wonder how in the world they managed to end up in the hell that is now Iraq… but for every foreigner abducted, there are probably 10 Iraqis being abducted and while we have to be here because it is home, truck drivers, security personnel for foreign companies and contractors do not. Sympathy has its limits in the Iraqi summer heat. Dozens of Iraqis are dying on a daily basis in places like Falloojeh and Najaf and everyone is mysteriously silent- one Brit, American or Pakistani dies and the world is in an uproar- it is getting tiresome.
As for The New Iraqi Police State, where US installed Dictator Allawi has just shut down Al Jazeera’s offices in Iraq, Riverbend says, “Word on the street has it that email, internet access, and telephone calls are being monitored closely. We actually heard a couple of reports of people being detained due to the contents of their email. It’s a daunting thought and speaks volumes about our current ‘liberated’ status- and please don’t bother sending me a copy of the “Patriot Act”… this last year it has felt like everyone is under suspicion for something.”
Stuart Hughes is blogging from Athens where he’s covering the Olympics for the BBC.
About 900 hacks, me included, are being put up at the Selete complex, a javelin throw away from the main Olympic Stadium.
The check in procedure resembles that of a prison – x-ray scanners, searches, and all sharp implements confiscated. The security guards let me keep my shoelaces but I couldn’t be trusted with my Swiss Army Knife. It was taken away for safe keeping by one of the ubiquitous jolly volunteers, all of whom are dressed in shorts and brightly coloured polo shirts. The fear of sharp instruments continued when I got to the restaurant – all knifes and forks are made from wood or plastic.
The rooms are comfortable, if spartan. One single bed. One wardrobe. One desk. One chair. One TV. Little else. I was surprised to find that they weren’t screwed to the floor, although this may have just been an oversight by the architects.
If Guantanamo Bay was taken over by Walt Disney it’d be a lot like Selete. All that’s missing are the orange jumpsuits.
General J.C. Christian reviews Michelle Malkin’s new book. For an interesting debate on just how bad Malkin’s research for this book was, see Eric Muller’s blog, starting here and continuing up. Muller and Greg Robinson convince me, though I know little about the history of the Japanese internment and I thought Malkin was a lightweight warmongering neocon twit already. I must be right, because the Libertarian Jackass agrees.
Libertarian Jackass asks, “WHAT HAPPENED TO Anthony Gancarski? Abducted by aliens? Under contract with the Feds? Midlife crisis?” See Garcanski’s latest incoherent (and dishonestly unlinked) word salad to see why these are good questions.
Via Arthur Silber, I found Claire Wolfe’s review of James Bovard’s new book, The Bush Betrayal, which I had missed. Arthur is doing some commentary on the book as well (see here) and has found that James Bovard has a blog.
Tim Swanson is posting pictures from the Mises University. Start here and follow the links. What a suck-up!
So that’s what happened. Ridge Raises Terror Level After Watching Cujo.