Juan Cole: 'Iraq Expert' Perle Shills for Chalabi at Senate Panel

[LittleApple81]

snip....


But here's an interesting contradiction. I said at one point that I thought Bremer should have acquiesced in Grand Ayatollah Sistani's request for open elections to be held this spring, and that if they had been, it might have forestalled the recent blow-up. I had in mind that Muqtada al-Sadr in particular would have been kept busy acting as a ward boss, trying to get his guys returned from East Baghdad & Kufa, etc.

Perle became alarmed and said that scheduling early elections would not have prevented the "flare-up" because the people who mounted it were enemies of freedom and uninterested in elections. Perle has this bizarre black and white view of the world and demonizes people right and left. A lot of the Mahdi Army young men who fought for Muqtada are just neighborhood youth, unemployed and despairing. Some are fanatics, but most of them don't hate freedom – most of them have no idea what it is, having never experienced democracy.

snip...

Now Chalabi's nephew Salem has been put in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein. Salem is a partner in Zell and Feith, a Jerusalem-based law firm headed by a West Bank settler, in which Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Planning, is also a senior partner when not in the US government. You can be assured that the trial will be conducted on behalf of the Bush administration and the Neocons, and on behalf of the Chalabis. Since the Chalabis have been trying to overthrow Saddam for decades, it is hard to see how this can have even the appearance of an impartial tribunal.

snip...

It would be really interesting to know the list of secret promises Chalabi has given Perle (and presumably the Israelis through Perle) that would explain this Neocon fervor for the man.
more...

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=2368

[MSgt213]

1. I posted this last night. Juan Cole is the person to read if you want to

really know what's going on in the Middle East. He's great.

[Jazzgirl]

2. I don't understand how they can legally "appoint" anybody

to try Saddam. Iraq doesn't even have a "real" government yet! Chalabi will NEVER run Iraq and if by some small chance he gets about a second to run it, he won't last a week! :mad:

edited for a typo.