Chalabi Smackdown

Do you think this whole break with Chalabi thing was staged, to improve his political reputation in Iraq?

The amount of money the INC was getting from the Pentagon, [$355,000 per month] is pathetically small. Just your average cell phone bill in Baghdad, if you use it a little, is about five grand a month. If you use it a lot, ten grand.

One of Chalabi's main problems in Iraq -- and Chalabi has a lot of problems -- is that he has been seen as too close to the Americans. So the Americans are cutting off money to Chalabi. But the Agency is dumping cash into that country and it will continue to dump huge quantities of cash. And the real discussion ought to be, to whom the Agency is giving money to.

The reflex of the Agency has been to dump cash on those who I would argue are the wrong people, particularly on those I call the unreconstructed Sunnis. There is one thing one must always remember: You lose the Shia, you lose Iraq. I am not sure the Agency fully grasps that. It would be amusing to find out if the Agency were giving money to the same people the Iranians are giving money to.

It is puzzling seeing Chalabi's sudden fall from grace, from the best friend status to the "evil doer" level.

So can you explain what really led to such an apparent deterioration in relations between Chalabi and the United States?
It's primarily a reflection of the facts on the ground in Baghdad.

The Pentagon has been a waning and declining force in the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA] for months. So State and the CIA have what I would describe as an irrational, supercharged hatred of Ahmed Chalabi. It's there for a long variety of reasons. Primarily, foremost because both institutions, with some notable exceptions, did not want to go to war in Iraq, and they blame Chalabi for us going to war, and hate his guts.

It is not at all surprising that bureaucratically, we are seeing a change as State and CIA become the dominant bureaucratic forces inside the Green Zone.

Are these "hatred" irrational?