August 28, 2005

The WSJ's Ahmed Chalabi Fan Club is back in high gear:

The Wall Street Journal runs a loooong article called "The Chalabi Comeback: Iraq's 'indispensable' man returns to center stage" about the ultra-wonderfulness of Dr. Chalabi, who fed us so much of the phony info on Saddam's non-existent WMDs in order to get us into this war. I particularly like how WSJ editorialist Robert L. Pollock praises "Ahmad the Thief" (as he is known because of his defrauding so many average Jordanians) because "Mr. Chalabi has assumed special responsibility for oil and infrastructure security." In other words, Chalabi has wormed his way into control of the armed men who are supposed to control Iraq's oil industry.

As I wrote in 2004 in The American Conservative, "

What does Chalabi really want? The simplest guess is that he wants what too many ambitious Iraqis want these days: to be a trillionaire. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "Iraq is estimated to hold 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves." At $40 per barrel, Iraq's oil is worth $4.6 trillion. Sure, Iraq's last trillionaire, Saddam Hussein, ended up in a hole in the ground, but he had one helluva ride along the way.

In The New Yorker, Jane Mayer quoted Scott Ritter, the much-reviled but apparently truth-telling weapons inspector, as saying, "[Chalabi] told me [in 1998] that, if I played ball, when he became President he'd control all of the oil concessions, and he'd make sure I was well taken care of."


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

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