Word: chalabied
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Klein's column "Look Who's Back!" [Oct. 31], on the political fall and rise of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, referred to "the greasy residue on his résumé." Chalabi was responsible for erroneous information about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction as well as the notion that invading U.S. troops would be greeted as saviors by the Iraqis. Those missteps do not make him an ideal candidate to be the next Prime Minister of Iraq. But Chalabi's renewed friendliness with the Bush Administration shows he can be counted on to jump-start Iraqi oil sales...
...arranged a meeting with Perle a few months before the invasion of Iraq. Over what Gaghan calls "the best cappuccino of my life," they bantered in Perle's palatial kitchen until Gaghan, at that point quite knowledgeable about the Middle East, questioned the viability of Perle's friend Ahmad Chalabi as a future Iraqi leader. "[Perle] steepled his hands just like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons and stared at me. Then the doorbell rang--beat ... beat ... beat--'Excellent. I'll introduce you to Bibi on the way out.'" (Neither Perle nor former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned calls...
...Wrong, of course. And when the Iraqis proved to be just a bit less welcoming than Chalabi had predicted, and no WMD were found, he fell hard. By the spring of 2004, Chalabi's home was raided by U.S. forces. His associates were suspected of fraud, torture, kidnapping and misuse of U.S. funds. Chalabi was suspected of spying for the Iranians. But nothing much came of that. Chalabi soon leveraged American disapproval into Baghdad street cred and a burgeoning career as a leader of the Shi'ite coalition. He currently serves as Deputy Prime Minister in Ibrahim al-Jaafari...
...Bush Administration harbors a gossamer strand of hope that the Dec. 15 election will finally produce a strong Iraqi government, a real coalition of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. The Administration also realizes it may take a supremely oleaginous political thug, perhaps someone as rare and fetid as Ahmad Chalabi, to bring...
...Chalabi is not the Bush Administration's first choice to preside over that coalition. "We have no preferences," a senior Administration official told me. Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a tough guy, secular Shi'ite and former CIA client, was the White House's covert favorite in last January's election, but he received only 14% of the vote. Allawi is trying to be a better politician this time, building a coalition slate with prominent Kurds and Sunnis. And he has credibility-and contacts-with the less extreme elements of the Sunni insurgency. But Allawi has limited appeal among religious...