This is absolutely infuriating. It's much worse than this, which I wasn't even too angry about. This raid is going to be spun by the press as "another embarassment" for the Bush administration because Ahmad Chalabi was a favoured Iraqi political leader of the Pentagon.
When I was in Baghdad last May, I was part of a raid by the U.S. military on the INC's headquarters. I was briefly handcuffed and questioned, but no biggie. The troops, obviously knowing little or nothing about the minutia of Iraqi politics, claimed they had been tipped off (likely by some Baathists) that illegal guns were inside the INC's offices. The whole debacle lasted about an hour and a formal apology was later issued by the military for the misunderstanding. This latest raid seems much more serious.
It is mind-boggling the extent to which some forces within the U.S. government (State Department, CIA) are willing to go to ruin the INC and Chalabi. So far as I can tell, they are the only truly democratic political movement of any kind in Iraq today. But as has been documented ad nauseam, Chalabi has made a lot of enemies. This is just the latest example. I don't want to pass judgement on this before learning more information, but it reeks of the kind of bullshit that has marked the Americans' treatment of Chalabi and his allies for the past few years.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 8:04 AM
