The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest

Vol: 32 Issue: 20 - Thursday, May 20, 2004

"Full Circle"
by Jack Kinsella

U.S. troops raided a house used by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi
and searched his party offices in Baghdad on Thursday.

Ahmad Chalabi used to be the Pentagon's fair-haired child, but it is
beginning to look like he played the Pentagon like a violin in the years
leading up to Saddam's overthrow.

First a little background: Chalabi is a Shi'a Muslim. He is the son of a
wealthy banking family whose grandfather, father and brother held
prominent posts in Iraqi governments until Saddam Hussein's Baath Party
seized power in 1968.

He has not lived in Iraq since 1956, apart from a period organizing
resistance in the Kurdish north in the mid-1990s. Chalabi was a math
professor at the American University in Beirut until 1977.

His main political support came from the US Congress, the Pentagon and
parts of the CIA. The US State Department never trusted him -- this
created some tension between Powell and Rumsfeld, although not quite the
'feud' the media describes.

In 1995 Chalabi organized an uprising in the Northern Iraq, which was
called off by the CIA at the crucial moment, and which subsequently led to
the deaths of thousands of insurgents at Saddam's hands.

Chalabi has little support from leaders of the various Iraqi exile groups,
or from Iraqis living in Iraq. The Arab governments in the Persian Gulf
region have told the administration that they would not allow Chalabi to
run a liberation army from their soil, even in an operation mounted with
U.S. help.

The ruling Sunnis of Saudi Arabia distrust Chalabi in part because he is
Shi'a, a branch of Islam whose adherents make up just over half of Iraq's
22 million inhabitants. The Kuwaitis didn't believe he could inspire a
successful revolt and refused to give him a staging area.

On the other side of Iraq, Turkey wanted nothing to do with Chalabi or his
plan. And Jordan would put him in jail were he to return because of a
banking fraud conviction.  Chalabi was convicted in absentia of bank fraud
in 1992 by a military court in Jordan, where he had founded a bank that
failed.

Chalabi claimed at the time that the charges were 'politically motivated'.
That's what Chalabi is now claiming about the US raid on his home and
party offices.

Despite all that, the Pentagon was Chalabi's chief supporter in the Bush
administration, based in part on his pre-war intelligence activities.  As
president of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group set up in 1992
(in part with CIA money), Chalabi pushed persistently for an armed
overthrow of Saddam.

Chalabi found defectors who affirmed suspicions that Saddam was building
weapons of mass destruction. He assured Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney
that the Iraqi people would greet American liberators with flowers; that
his militia, the Free Iraqi Fighters, would restore order; and that, after
a few months, the vast majority of U.S. troops could go home.

Chalabi assured the Pentagon it need leave  behind a small, inconspicuous
force-25,000 to 50,000 soldiers-at bases to be set up well outside the
cities.

The new Chalabi government would then be a vehicle for economic
modernization, Western-style democracy, and-by the force of its
example-the transformation of the entire Middle East.

Of course, it didn't turn out that way. What happened?

Assessment:

Only now are we beginning to understand Chalabi's full role in the
campaign to convince the coalition that Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction. It turns out his cadre of dubious defectors were willing to
say whatever their listeners wanted to hear about WMD.

For example, allegations about Saddam's "mobile bio-weapons labs"-which
have since been dismissed within the intelligence community (and were
seriously doubted all along)-were made by a defector who never spoke to
anyone in the U.S. government.

Moreover, the defector was related to a senior official in Chalabi's Iraqi
National Congress. And the one defector who did speak to U.S. analysts,
and who confirmed the report about mobile biolabs, was made available by
the INC-and was, for that reason, believed. Even though the Defense
Intelligence Agency "red-tagged" the defector as a known liar.

Chalabi has been working both sides against the middle, and it is only now
that the administration is starting to realize they'd been hoodwinked by
Chalabi's selective 'intelligence'  into overthrowing Saddam. Post-war
documents showed that Chalabi's organization was heavily infiltrated by
agents of Saddam's regime.

And once installed in power, Chalabi began working in secret with Iranian
agents seeking to foment a Shi'a uprising and install an Islamic
government in Iraq.

That's why US forces raided his headquarters and seized his computers,
files and other equipment.  They were also seeking two of Chalabi's aides,
who weren't present at the time of the raid.  Chalibi himself was not
detained, for now.

But it is a major embarrassment to the administration and provides more
fuel for the political fire consuming the Bush administration's base of
support for the war.

That isn't to say the war was not justified, whether Chalabi cooked the
intelligence and conned the mighty US CIA or not.  The Bush administration
WAS conned by Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, but Chalabi's spies
and lies were the icing on the intelligence cake, not the cake itself.

The war was justified internationally by seventeen UN resolutions --
despite the uproar created primarily by the French, Russians and Germans
to prevent Saddam's overthrow.

Since the war, we've learned that Saddam had paid them off to keep him in
power.  Evidently, the useful idiots who back their position that
'inspections were working' didn't care.

The war was justified nationally by the Congress when it gave the Bush
administration blanket approval to carry the war on terror to nations that
harbor al-Qaeda terrorists following the attacks on September 11.

And the war was justified morally on the same grounds that justifed the
war on the Nazis. To remove a megalomanical dictator whose brutality
rivaled the worst dictators of the 20th century.

Documents discovered since the end of the war amply demonstrate both the
production of weapons of mass destruction and their stockpiling.  (A
recent attack on US troops involved the use of an artillery shell with a
VX chemical warhead.)

Saddam Hussein was a threat to US national security, and has been since
1991.  It was Saddam's agents who attempted to assassinate a former US
president in Kuwait.  For twelve years, Saddam was a threat to his
neighbors and containing him required almost constant air bombardment by
US and British warplanes.

Saddam's agents met with Mohammed Atta in Prague before 9/11, not
according to Chalabi or even the CIA, but according to Czech intelligence.
And documents found in both Afghanistan and Iraq establish links between
al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein dating back to 1996.

None of that will matter as the political accusations start to fly.  Ahmad
Chalabi and his spies, lies and cries of 'political motivation' will make
a convincing case that the administration dropped the ball -- if the
public can be brainwashed into forgetting all about Saddam. Which could
spell trouble for the Bush administration.

Which is nothing compared to the trouble it might spell for Iraq and the
Middle East.

The Bible makes a number of references to 'Babylon' in the last days.
Jeremiah  51:49 speaks of a literal 'Babylon, recording, "As Babylon hath
caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of
all the earth."

Isaiah  21:9:  "And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple
of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and
all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground."

Jeremiah  50:9 records a prophecy against the literal Babylon that reads
like a Bomb Damage Assessment Report for either Gulf War:

"For, lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of
great nations from the north country: and they shall set themselves in
array against her; from thence she shall be taken: their arrows shall be
as of a mighty expert man; none shall return in vain."

Eventually, of that literal Babylon, and as a consequence of the 'assembly
of great nations' the prophet writes, "Because of the wrath of the LORD it
shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate: every one that
goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues."
(Jeremiah 50:13)

The literal city of 'Babylon', as most of you know is about thirty miles
outside Baghdad.  And while it lost its ancient glory centuries ago, it
has yet to be 'wholly desolate'.

There are also references to a figurative Babylon in the last days that
some say is actually a reference to the United States:

"And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen,
that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the
wrath of her fornication." (Revelation  14:8)

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is
fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of
every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
(Revelation 18:2)

Prophecy speculators suggest that because John writes, "every shipmaster,
and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea,
stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying,
What city is like unto this great city!" (Revelation 18:17-18) that this
might be New York City.

The real Babylon can't be seen from any sea, and, just outside New York
City is a town called Babylon, New York. So 'Babylon the Great', they say,
is the 'great city' of New York.

That is WAY to speculative for me, but there is a certain Divine irony
here.  Iraq is the cradle of civilization. The Garden of Eden was located
in Iraq. Abram was called by God out of Iraq to the Promised Land.  The
Fall of Man, and the first recorded human government both occurred in
Iraq.

Now we are on the other side of history.  Events in two places crowd out
the news, almost to the exclusion of anything else; America's war with
Babylon -- which arguably was a direct result of the fall of New York's
Twin Towers -- and the Arab-Israeli fight for possession of the Promised
Land.

Either of which could spark the war that ultimately brings about the fall
of human government at Armageddon and the restoration of Eden during the
Millennial Kingdom.  It seems that humanity is about to come full circle.

It seems a fitting irony.
 
 

Note:

It would appear that the Lord is directing things since our decision to
get out of Dodge in advance of the Thought Police.  After much prayer and
soul-searching, we had only made the final decision last week, only a day
or so before I mentioned it in the Omega Letter.

(For those who don't know: Jack has decided to move from Canada to the US.

He felt the recently passed law, in effect making the placing of certain Biblical passages

in a public domain a hate crime, could affect his ability to publish the Omega Letter.)

Since then, the following has happened:

As soon as I told my kids of our decision, one of my sons told me he
wanted to buy our house.

That takes care of THAT problem.  But now, we are homeless. Not so fast .
 .

A friend of mine in North Carolina (where Gayle and I spent so much of
last year) called me THE VERY NEXT DAY to tell me of a house for rent in
exactly the town (and neighborhood) Gayle and I had hoped to relocate.

It turned out that the owner is also a friend of Gayle's and we are
familiar with the house -- and it IS perfect.

We called her, and she is delighted not to have to list it, show it, etc.,
and, consequentially, everything is pretty much settled.  In less than a
week.

God is good.
In any case, it would seem that this move has His blessing. We'll keep you posted.