This is certainly good news on Thanksgiving. I believe that I've read something concerning insurgent groups wanting to lay down their arms before but this piece is a bit more definitve. The tribes in al-Anbar are the ones who have caused the most trouble in Iraq. The article does not distinguish which tribes are in fact involved but I found the comment that they were dealing with Chalabi rather than with Talabani interesting.
Are they anticipating a Chalabi victory on December 15th? Is the "talk" a means to promote Chalabi's party?
This interview with Talabani done in 2002 gives a bit of recent historical perspective to current Iraqi politics. Talabani doesn't seem to hold the CIA (or State) in very high esteem.
He's not alone.
4 comments:
I bet a lot of this stuff is going on behind the scenes.
I don't know what to think of Chalib winning. I guess it is up to the Iraqis.
I like Chalabi because of the people who don't like him. This sounds flip but is actually a pretty sound way of evaluating, in the dark. I like Talabani for himself. Could it be that both guys are patriots?
Talabani on Chalabi:
In particular, he favored an armed struggle inside Iraq, and to do this, he wanted to found an INC army;
in contrast, the CIA wanted the INC to look to a military coup and not develop any kind of military forces to fight against the Iraqi army.
He wanted to have armored forces and work on the ground against Iraq; they wanted to use the INC for propaganda campaigns.
So the U.S. government changed its mind about Chalabi and began to hate him.
First he had been beloved inside the CIA, then he was hated there.
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The almost always wrong CIA, scored again:
In retrospect it is obvious Chalabi was right and the CIA and State Dept wrong.
An in place Iraqi Army sure would have come in handy in not letting the insurgency build for months while Bremmer fiddled.
Now they all are so ready to pile all the blame on the administration, while taking no responsibility for their serious screwups.
Anybody ever hear a credible story about why General Garner was so quickly and unceremoniously sent back to Texas?
Doug,
The only thing that I heard was that State wanted to run Defense's plan even though they opposed it. Powell v. Rumsfeld and W tipped it to Powell who botched it.
That's one of the reasons behind Powell's "here's your hat, what's your hurry" goodbye from W.
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