We are so far beyond the cliche of rats deserting a sinking ship. The neocons and their enablers are in a lifeboat throwing each other over the side. The latest bit to dribble out?
E&P has a preview of this weekend's NYT Magazine expose on Chalabi and his one-time BFF Wolfowitz. Have a bite:
So, Ahmad Chalabi, what went wrong in Iraq in the war you helped to sell? "The Americans sold us out," he tells longtime Baghdad reporter Dexter Filkins.
One more sad sorry example of the Keystone Cops in charge of our national security. I cannot believe anyone is voting for any of them. More below...
Now, in an interview in his London home, Chalabi, betraying what Filkins calls "a touch of bitterness," declares, "The real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz," the former assistant secretary of defense, whom he still considers a friend. "They chickened out. The Pentagon guys chickened out...The Americans screwed it up."
But that's not because they did too little but, rather, too much. Chalabi thinks the U.S. should have exited quickly and turned things over to Iraqis, such as himself and Moktada al-Sadr. "It was a puppet show!" he says referring to the occupation. "The worst of all worlds. We were in charge, and we had no power."
He adds: "America betrays its friends. It sets them up and betrays them. I'd rather be America's enemy."
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What about the WMD propaganda? Chalabi counters views that he was the catalyst, saying that it was Bush officials who "came to us and asked, `Can you help us find something on Saddam?'"
He also claims that he warned the Bush people that various Iraqi informants were unreliable, only to hear the Americans say, referring to the source, "This guy is the mother lode." Chalabi, of all people asks, "Can you believe that on such a basis the United States would go to war?
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David Kay, the weapons inspector, weighs in on Wolfowitz: "He was a true believer. He thought he had the evidence. That came from the defectors. They came from Chalabi."
One more reminder of how the Bush Administration has harmed the US and weakened it's security to a dangerous level. By their own standards, they probably qualify as enemy combatants.