{"id":171,"date":"2006-11-07T12:56:35","date_gmt":"2006-11-07T17:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=171"},"modified":"2007-02-27T22:09:27","modified_gmt":"2007-02-28T03:09:27","slug":"chalabi-and-re-baathification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=171","title":{"rendered":"Chalabi and Re-Baathification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gideon Rachman, the “official” blogger of the Financial Times<\/em>, recently ran into Ahmed Chalabi in London and it prompted a recollection<\/a> of Chalabi’s role in the US invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Rachman notes a change in Chalabi’s “program” these days:<\/p>\n

[I]n one significant respect, Chalabi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s message now differs markedly from that of his original neo-con sponsors. While they are clearly itching to take on Iran, Chalabi is urging reconciliation<\/strong>. He argues that the Iranians would be willing to play a positive role in stabilising Iraq, if Iran could be assured that the new Iraq would not then be used as base to attack them. Chalabi wants to convene a regional peace conference and worries that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iraq is being turned into a battleground between Iran and the United States.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But even though a respectable crowd turned out to see Chalabi today, I have the feeling that the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s audience is dwindling away<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chalabi has reinvented himself any number of different times, including one recent incarnation as an ally of Moqtada al-Sadr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps feeling his audience “dwindling away,” Chalabi may be reinventing himself in an even more dramatic way as a champion of re-Baathification!<\/p>\n

A Washington Post<\/em> article–“Proposal Would Rehire Members of Hussein’s Party<\/a>“–reports the following:<\/p>\n

A high-ranking commission of Iraq’s Shiite-led government said Monday it had prepared a draft law that could return tens of thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to their government jobs…<\/p>\n

Ali al-Lami, executive director of the Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification, said in an interview that the commission had drafted a law for parliament that would give 1.5 million former Baathists who “excommunicate” themselves from the party the option of returning to their former government jobs or drawing a pension for their past employment…<\/p>\n

Lami said 3,000 or so top former Baathists would be given their pensions but would not be allowed to resume government employment. And about 1,500 high-level former Baathists would be barred from ever resuming their jobs or drawing a pension.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This has all the markings of a Chalabi move.\u00c2\u00a0 Chalabi has always been the most ardent supporter of the “Commission for de-Baathification.”\u00c2\u00a0 And who is Lami? An article in Al Hayat<\/em> from February 23, 2005, republished by the BBC on February 24, 2005 (no on-line link) identifies Lami in this way:<\/p>\n

“Ali Faysal al-Lami [is a] member of the Shi’i Political Bureau and the political coordinator of the group in the United Iraqi Alliance that supports the nomination of Iraqi National Congress Leader Ahmad al-Chalabi to the post of prime minister<\/strong>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would appear that Chalabi is now courting the Baathist insurgency.\u00c2\u00a0 Presumably, he has the strong support of US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in this regard.<\/p>\n

One wonders, however, if his Right Zionist friends are similarly prepared to adopt such a conciliatory approach to the “old guard” Sunni Arab Baathist ruling elite. \u00c2\u00a0 If so, this would be far more significant that all the pseudo-self-criticism<\/a> that has been making news of late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gideon Rachman, the “official” blogger of the Financial Times, recently ran into Ahmed Chalabi in London and it prompted a recollection of Chalabi’s role in the US invasion of Iraq. Rachman notes a change in Chalabi’s “program” these days: [I]n one significant respect, Chalabi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s message now differs markedly from that of his original neo-con sponsors. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}