Greetings from a first time poster.
I’ll try to be succinct although I don’t share the same eloquence as many I’ve seen here, so please bear with me if I get a little verbose.
I’ve been following the debates concerning the war, and while I remain steadfastly anti-war, I appreciate the fears of Americans, and I’m trying to distill my own truths from the huge amount of information out there. I believe that it’s a good thing that Saddam Hussein is finished for all intents and purposes. I don’t believe this was the way to do it, but let’s leave that argument in all the other posts devoted to it.
One thing I find disturbing, given the thought that what we are doing is in the best interest of the people of Iraq, is that Ahmed Chalabi is even *considered * to be largely in charge of the redistribution of Iraqi wealth in the form of oil profits. He is an ex-Iraqi criminal that specializes in fraud, from what I gather. Convicted in absentia for bank fraud in Jordan, and officially on the run from that country, he was single-handedly responsible for an Enron-type scam that amounted to 10% of Jordan’s GDP.
He’s apparently well known in Iraq for his drimes above all else.
I find this troubling because of all the options available worldwide to those who claim to do the right thing by the Iraqi people, the man chosen is the one who specialises in precisely the opposite. I now suspect the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush administration more so than I ever did, and wonder even more about the lucrative pickings available in Iraq, and how those billions will be distributed.
I can’t see any reason for this choice other than the most disturbing of all:
“No matter what happens now, Iraq’s remaining wealth will go to those that engineered the war, because they intend to install a convicted felon who’s an expert in cooking the books.” Why else install a man whose forte is 3 Card Monte on an international scale?
Can anybody fill me in on the righteous motives for such a choice?