“Creating a Post-Saddam Iraq”

In a monograph of that title, published by JINSA in 1997, Dr. Ahmed Chalabi offered the JINSA Board of Directors a cogent description of the difficulties besetting Iraq and a prescient prescription for deliverance from Saddam. It wasn’t right in all the particulars, notably the one about using indigenous forces to overthrow the regime, but it was right in the broad strokes of policy and the need to take affirmative action to rescue Iraq from Saddam.

In a monograph of that title, published by JINSA in 1997, Dr. Ahmed Chalabi offered the JINSA Board of Directors a cogent description of the difficulties besetting Iraq and a prescient prescription for deliverance from Saddam. It wasn’t right in all the particulars, notably the one about using indigenous forces to overthrow the regime, but it was right in the broad strokes of policy and the need to take affirmative action to rescue Iraq from Saddam.

“Iraq is blessed with a talented and industrious population… (it) may fairly be described as the western world’s gateway to the non-Arab Muslim East. More importantly, Iraq is the only Middle Eastern country with both water and oil.” He said the Ba’ath Party had “systematically destroyed Iraqi society; eliminating or suborning all independent social structures, everything which offered an independent outlet for Iraqi civil society.”

His called on the U.S.:

1. “To consider the realities of Saddam’s dictatorship.”
2. “To note the physical weakness of the regime.”
3. To offer “an open U.S. commitment to Saddam’s overthrow and its practical expression in serious support of the democratic opposition.”

He added:

4. “What we don’t need are U.S. troops or high technology weapons.” And for the future …
5. “General amnesty to all but the most culpable… a governing transitional council of all religious, political and ethnic leadership and an explicit commitment to Iraq’s unity and territorial integrity.”

Four out of five isn’t bad. The U.S., not the Iraq National Congress (INC) provided the military power, but despite the fact that what we did looked like what he said, Dr. Chalabi has ceaselessly been vilified and victimized by the American intelligence community and by the State Department under Secretary Powell. He was accused of using an agent codenamed “Curveball” to pass bad intelligence to the CIA, and accused of manipulating the Administration to get us to invade his country for him. He was hounded upon his return to Iraq – NOT by former Ba’athists, but by the CIA!

It is important then to note that The Wall Street Journal cites the new Robb-Silberman Report on pre-war intelligence, saying, “Post-war investigations concluded that Curveball’s reporting was not influenced by, controlled by, or connected to, the INC… Over all, CIA’s post-war investigations revealed that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on pre-war assessments.”

So, nine weeks after the Iraqi people defied the odds and chose a government, and today as the new government has chosen a president, we are pleased to remind our readers that in 1997 Dr. Chalabi came to JINSA and called for a “broad-based popular movement committed to representative government and to the protection of the human rights of all Iraqis (as offering) moral and practical power,” adding, “despite the ethnic and religious complexity of Iraqi society, parties representing all facets are united in this democratic goal.”

We hoped so at and wrote the time, “It is in America’s best interest to support indigenous opposition movements and their… supporters seeking changes in the governing regimes in Baghdad and Tehran.”

Iraq down; Iran left to go.