Progressive Talking Points 11/8/05

The Return of Ahmed Chalabi

Ahmed Chalabi returns to Washington, D.C. this week to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary John Snow today and other Bush administration officials later during his trip. Chalabi returns to Washington with a sordid history – he is currently under investigation by the FBI for passing U.S. intelligence secrets to Iran, and he is widely viewed as having provided much of the misleading and false intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. By now, it is evident to most that the Bush administration made a mistake in trusting Chalabi before the Iraq war; it appears the administration is ready and willing to make the same mistake again.

• Chalabi is under investigation for colluding with Iran. Chalabi is under investigation for passing U.S. intelligence to Iran in early 2004. But despite the fact that Condoleezza Rice publicly promised a full criminal inquiry, “the Federal Bureau of Investigation hasn't interviewed Mr. Chalabi himself or many current and former U.S. government officials thought likely to have information related to the matter." The leak threatened U.S. efforts to monitor any Iranian steps to develop nuclear weapons and Chalabi continues to maintain a close friendship with Iran.
  
  
• Chalabi was one of the forces behind the faulty intelligence that led the U.S. to war. Chalabi and the INC “supplied information, used by the Bush administration to justify the war, about Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and assured officials that U.S. occupying forces would be greeted as liberators." And despite warnings that Chalabi’s information should have been treated with "suspicion," his reports flowed "from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President's office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals."
  
  
• Chalabi’s influence underscores the importance of completing Phase II of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s pre-war review. The continuing influence of Chalabi and his upcoming visit underscore the importance of the Senate completing its intelligence review. One of the areas that Phase II will investigate is "the use of intelligence provided by the Iraqi National Congress ." The committee needs to have the ability to interview key government officials to resolve questions about how intelligence might have been misused before the war.