As Christopher Allbritton of Back to Iraq and Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo have noted, Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, recently and happily admitted to manipulating the United States. Chalabi wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and with the appropriate “intel,” encouragement and war-mongering, America invaded Iraq.

As Josh Marshall documented in his blog:

“ ‘As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important.’

Those were the words last week of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the INC, member of the IGC, and central player in a scandal the scope of which Americans are only now beginning to grasp.

The ‘what was said before’ that Chalabi is referring to, of course, are the numerous bogus claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction he peddled into American governmental channels over the last half dozen years and more.”

The weapons of mass destruction, which were the ostensible reason for America’s rushed entry into war with Iraq, have yet to be found. The upshot of all this is that President Bush got his war, Chalabi got rid of Hussein, and Halliburton began to joyously engage in war profiteering.

Halliburton’s war profiteering is a disgusting example of crony capitalism, but it is important to keep in mind that Iraq suffers from similar problems. Chalabi has his dirty little fingers in every dirty little pie. Crony capitalism is alive and well in Iraq, and Chalabi and his friends benefit from it.  

America helped plunge Iraq into its present chaos. One of America’s and Iraq’s goals must be to eliminate this sort of crony capitalism — both in America and on the ground in Iraq.

Mimi Hanaoka