Word: chalabi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Since L. Paul Bremer handed over authority, the Iraqi government has done a terrible job of, well, governing. The thin bench of Iraqi politicians is made up mostly of rich exiles like the Pentagon-backed Ahmed Chalabi, Iran-funded Islamists and, well, just straight up crooks. There has yet to emerge an Iraqi prime minister who stayed in Iraq while Saddam was in power. First there was the U.S.-backed Ayad Allawi, who was widely perceived among Iraqis as a CIA patsy and whose defense minister oversaw the disappearance of more than $1 billion during his eight-month tenure. Then...
...hard pressed to find a Sunni ? or for that matter anyone else ? who thinks Saddam's trial was fair or impartial. The Coalition Provisional Authority, the institution dedicated to dismantling Saddam's regime, established Saddam's tribunal. Its first head was the nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who dedicated his life to destroying Saddam. The tribunal's presiding judge is a Kurd from Halabjah, the Kurdish city Saddam gassed in 1988. How could the man vote other than to execute Saddam and still expect to go home to Kurdistan...
...final bend, the leaders are exactly the same group that jockeyed for the post after the first post-Saddam election: the incumbent, Ibrahim al-Jafaari; Iran's preferred candidate, Adil Abdul-Mahdi; current American favorite Iyad Allawi; and, the darkest of dark horses, one-time Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi. Asked to handicap the race last January, a leading Iraqi political scientist was reminded of a bumper sticker from an old U.S. Presidential campaign: ?Thank God,? said Wamid Nadhmi, ?that only one of them will become prime minister...
...only one of the four with even less credibility than Allawi is Chalabi. While claiming to be a secular politician, he went into last January's election as a member of the Shi'ite coalition, as an ally of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. This time around, he contested the election on his own-and appears to have failed to win a single seat outright. The elections proved what most journalists have suspected all along: that Chalabi is one of Iraq's most despised political figures. Only in the surreal world of Iraqi politics would such a man even...
...Iraqi official, citing how the seats seem to be going to sectarian extremists on both sides. Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's secular Shi'ite party hasn't so far got the number it was expecting. And according to the preliminary results, the secular list of Shi'ite Ahmad Chalabi, one of Washington's favorite lobbyists for the war to overthrow Saddam, didn't get enough votes for one seat. So even as Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders are meeting to discuss forming a broadly representative government, the lack of a significant moderate voting bloc means there will probably...