By C.J. JANOVY
At the downtown library, I recently checked out Aram Roston’s new The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi. I had hoped to learn more about Chalabi’s relationship with Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback.
Chalabi is the Iraqi exile and charming con man who fabricated the Iraqi National Congress – an impressive-sounding organization supposedly made up of leaders-in-waiting of a new, free Iraq once the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein. As Roston shows, though, the INC was really just a handful of Chalabi’s sometimes drunken sycophants. Still, Chalabi was able to convince key Washington insiders – mainly Neocons with big names such as Richard Perle – that we must remove Hussein. These folks pushed Chalabi’s fairy tales long after the CIA quit buying anything he had to say (and I mean literally “buying”: U.S. taxpayers funded Chalabi’s escapades in the Middle East and in London for years).
As Roston puts it, Chalabi didn’t have his own army to depose Saddam, so he talked us into using ours. Much of this talk consisted of long-since disproven “facts” about WMD programs, mobile chemical weapons labs and lots of other propaganda that many of us average citizens knew was bullshit way before the war ever started.
As we reported back in 2004, Brownback was one of Chalabi’s main escorts around the halls of power in Washington. Disappointingly, Roston devotes a mere sentence to the senator from Kansas, and it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. That’s not to say Brownback’s role in Chalabi’s game has been overstated; it’s simply because Roston focuses on other aspects of Chalabi’s life.
One subplot that’s particularly disturbing is how Chalabi played the media. That includes the New York Times’ Judith Miller, whose sins against the profession by now are well known. It also includes David Rose, who wrote several pro-Chalabi stories for Vanity Fair before realizing he’d been duped. The account of Rose’s reporting – and gradual realization that he’s been had – is agonizing for a journalist to read. In Roston’s book, Rose regrets how his reporting helped rush us to war; he’s shaken and humiliated. I know what it feels like to regret something I’ve written, but jeez, how could he have gotten it so, so wrong?
Roston’s book is as important as it is painful. He conservatively estimates that over the course of eleven years, we – you and me, U.S. taxpayers, through the CIA and other agencies – paid Chalabi and his delusional cohorts $59 million for their bogus intelligence and twisted PR.
That doesn’t include the cost of the actual war.
We haven’t heard much from Brownback since he aborted his pathetic run for president. Actually, we didn’t hear much from him even when he was running. Here's hoping he’s fading, because Kansans can do better.
It MUST be important if you are willing to check it out of the library. Plus, as we all know, whatever is written HAS to be true.
Alas, I am in too good a mood because of the work of most of your writers today to debunk this flimsy, but inviting morsel. Maybe I can pencil it in for tomorrow?
I am (the) Trevor and I approved this comment.
Posted at: July 16, 2008 3:43 PM