<a href="http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5208564">BAGHDAD (Reuters)</a> - U.S. troops and Iraqi police raided the home and party offices of Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday, taking computers and private files from the man once considered Washington's top Iraq ally.

An Iraqi judge, Hassan Muathin, said the raid was carried out under an arrest warrant for several men wanted for stealing state-owned vehicles, but Chalabi accused U.S.-led authorities running Iraq of a "targeted attack" against him.

Squads of soldiers and police sealed off the neighborhood around the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a nearby house used by Chalabi, removing computers, files, a copy of the Koran and other personal items, Chalabi said.

"I was asleep, I opened the door and police came into my home carrying pistols," a clearly furious Chalabi told reporters. "They went through the rooms and I told them to get out, but they said they were slaves under orders."

No one was arrested in the raid, which occurred only two days after U.S. officials said the Pentagon had cut off about $340,000 a month in funding to the INC -- payments that were made in part for intelligence gathered by the party.

STANDOFF WITH U.S.

Chalabi, a former exile who returned to Iraq after Saddam Hussein's overthrow and was viewed by some in Washington as a possible leader, said he believed the raid had been carried out because of his deepening standoff with U.S. authorities.

He has been at odds with Washington over a number of issues, including exactly how much power would be handed to Iraqis when the country regains sovereignty on July 1.

"Let my people go. Let my people be free. It is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs," said Chalabi.

He accused Iraq's interior minister, a former member of the U.S-appointed Governing Council, of being behind the "spurious warrant."

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the Pentagon's decision to cut off funding was made in the light of the planned handover of power to Iraqis.

"We felt it was no longer appropriate for us to continue funding in that fashion," Wolfowitz told a U.S. Senate hearing.

U.S. officials have said they had doubts about the intelligence the INC provided and about whether Chalabi was motivated chiefly by a desire for power.

In the past few months, Chalabi has repeatedly crossed swords with U.S. authorities in Washington and Baghdad. On trips to the United States he has criticized U.S. policy in Iraq, seemingly in an effort to shore up support at home.

He has also drawn criticism from U.S.-led authorities in Iraq who have expressed concern he is trying to exercise too much influence over the political process in the build up to the handover of sovereignty.

Chalabi, who lived abroad in exile for more than four decades, was convicted in absentia of bank fraud in 1992 by a military court in Jordan, where he had founded a bank that failed. He says the charges were politically motivated.

The Pentagon flew him into Iraq with a group of followers after the U.S.-led invasion last year, giving him an opportunity to establish a political base.

But he has struggled to drum up support and surveys in Iraq have ranked him as one of the least liked politicians.

Chalabi has many critics in the U.S. government, notably at the CIA, which suspected his group may have been penetrated by Saddam's agents before the war and which questioned the intelligence information it provided.

Innnnnteresting. 4 weeks to go until the handover and this happens - obviously there's no word on exactly why this happened yet. There's been criticism over the standard of intelligence his group has been providing (for $$$ of course) but a move like this is pretty serious. It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out.

Add it to the list of things that is killing any hopes of a peaceful Iraq and a true handover of power. The war turned quagmyr is officially depressing.

Originally posted by sppunk
Add it to the list of things that is killing any hopes of a peaceful Iraq and a true handover of power. The war turned quagmyr is officially depressing.

Not necessarily - he definitely had his eye on power in the country, but apparently he's not exactly popular. It could make the actual handover date a more difficult target, but if stops an unpopular politician from gaining power in the new, 'democratic' Iraq then it should be a positive thing in the end. I'm just wondering exactly what prompted it

And what's with the 'ye olde quagmyr'?

I've heard this name give a couple of interviews. You could tell he was after power. Also he wasn't exactly a US supported, more like just wanting to get Saddam gone. Also he spoke like he was an Iraqi patriot but then you find out he had not even lived in Iraq for a long time and he wasn't very popular among the public. I actually didn't care for the man after I saw his interviews and this isn't that surprising.

Originally posted by sppunk
quagmyr
what word is that? please broaden my knowledge of English (if it really exists). thanks

Originally posted by I_was_aborted
I've heard this name give a couple of interviews. You could tell he was after power. Also he wasn't exactly a US supported, more like just wanting to get Saddam gone.

nah, chalabi is the main informant the bush adminstration used.

watch this. you could tell chalabi was a fuckin douche even when the u.s. was supporting him.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/

I had still heard him speak on a few shows right at the start of the war and right before. He was not the best at explaining what he wanted. At the time he had stated his interested in helping lead Iraq and this was way before the war was even over.

Originally posted by I_was_aborted
I had still heard him speak on a few shows right at the start of the war and right before. He was a strange fellow.

your right. and he definitely was after his own power to the point of feeding false information to the bush administration. watch the program, it shows interviews with him and its hilarious the gall he has when they question him.

Originally posted by RopeyLopey

what word is that? please broaden my knowledge of English (if it really exists). thanks

Quagmire - it's like an area of land which sinks very easily when stepped on, like a bog

I do this a lot, but it entertains me
<img src="http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/images/war.229.gif">

Originally posted by DeviousJ
And what's with the 'ye olde quagmyr'?

Haha, sorry about that. You guys know what I mean. :)

Wait... you guys are saying the guy wants power, but aren't they having elections sometime after the handover?

We have had elections in America for the last 200 years but that hasn't stopped power hungry bastards from infiltrating the system.

Originally posted by I_was_aborted
We have had elections in America for the last 200 years but that hasn't stopped power hungry bastards from infiltrating the system. But the guy is unpopular. If he's that unpopular, he isn't going to get elected.

The power hungry bastards elected in this country were elected because people voted for them. With one exception, of course.

Not just one exception. And please try to remember that not everyone votes, even if it is important to them. Lots of ways for politicians noone likes to get elected...

Originally posted by I_was_aborted
Not just one exception. And please try to remember that not everyone votes, even if it is important to them. Lots of ways for politicians noone likes to get elected... I think that in a country like Iraq, where they just got over a horrible dicator, there'll be a good voter turnout... it isn't like America where people are so apathetic it's amazing.

Originally posted by RopeyLopey

what word is that? please broaden my knowledge of English (if it really exists). thanks Giggity giggity!

Originally posted by BeautifulLoser
Wait... you guys are saying the guy wants power, but aren't they having elections sometime after the handover? as of now they are supposed to happen at first in January next year.

Agency: Chalabi group was front for Iran

BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

May 21, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

The Information Collection Program also "kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing" by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years.

An administration official confirmed that "highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel."

The Defense Department this week halted payment of $340,000 a month to Chalabi's program. Chalabi had long been the favorite of the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Intelligence sources say Chalabi himself has passed on sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Iranians.

Patrick Lang, former director of the intelligence agency's Middle East branch, said he had been told by colleagues in the intelligence community that Chalabi's U.S.-funded program to provide information about weapons of mass destruction and insurgents was effectively an Iranian intelligence operation. "They [the Iranians] knew exactly what we were up to," he said.

He described it as "one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history."

"I'm a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work," he said.

An intelligence agency spokesman would not discuss questions about his agency's internal conclusions about the alleged Iranian operation. But he said some of its information had been helpful to the U.S. "Some of the information was great, especially as it pertained to arresting high value targets and on force protection issues," he said. "And some of the information wasn't so great."

At the center of the alleged Iranian intelligence operation, according to administration officials and intelligence sources, is Aras Karim Habib, a 47-year-old Shia Kurd who was named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid on Chalabi's home and offices in Baghdad Thursday. He eluded arrest.

Karim, who sometimes goes by the last name of Habib, is in charge of the information collection program.

The intelligence source briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions said that Karim's "fingerprints are all over it."

"There was an ongoing intelligence relationship between Karim and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, all funded by the U.S. government, inadvertently," he said.

The Iraqi National Congress has received about $40 million in U.S. funds over the past four years, including $33 million from the State Department and $6 million from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In Baghdad after the war, Karim's operation was run out of the fourth floor of a secure intelligence headquarters building, while the intelligence agency was on the floor above, according to an Iraqi source who knows Karim well.

The links between the INC and U.S. intelligence go back to at least 1992, when Karim was picked by Chalabi to run his security and military operations.

Indications that Iran, which fought a bloody war against Iraq during the 1980s, was trying to lure the U.S. into action against Saddam Hussein appeared many years before the Bush administration decided in 2001 that ousting Hussein was a national priority.

In 1995, for instance, Khidhir Hamza, who had once worked in Iraq's nuclear program and whose claims that Iraq had continued a massive bomb program in the 1990s are now largely discredited, gave UN nuclear inspectors what appeared to be explosive documents about Iraq's program. Hamza, who fled Iraq in 1994, teamed up with Chalabi after his escape.

The documents, which referred to results of experiments on enriched uranium in the bomb's core, were almost flawless, according to Andrew Cockburn's recent account of the event in the political newsletter CounterPunch.

But the inspectors were troubled by one minor matter: Some of the techinical descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. They determined that the original copy had been written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents were fraudulent.

Originally posted by RopeyLopey

what word is that? please broaden my knowledge of English (if it really exists). thanks

quaqmire - it's a figure of speech that means "a sticky situation that you can't seem to get out of"


umm.. on tv they were saying some of the american government people think that chalabi was a spy? i don't know many details about it

What was he doing having access to highly classified information anyway? Thats just dumb.

sounds like noriega and panama all over again.. cia informant decides to actually care about the people of his country instead of the wishes of the united states, gets pinned as the bad guy and thus justifying more of the united states actions in iraq.

Noriega was the good guy? I gotta start paying better attention.

Originally posted by Quiet CD
sounds like noriega and panama all over again.. cia informant decides to actually care about the people of his country instead of the wishes of the united states, gets pinned as the bad guy and thus justifying more of the united states actions in iraq.


You have no fucking clue about the situation do you? I don't think that Chalabi was acting in his countries best interests, rather his own.