Saturday, October 22, 2005
Wake Up And Smell The Chalabi
Der Spiegel reports that Zuheir al-Siddiq, the central witness on whom the UN's Detlev Mehlis relied for his report on the Hariri assassination, has a résumé awfully similar to that of Ahmad "the Iraqis will greet you with flowers and candy" Chalabi: Grifter, liar, not particularly trustworthy. Even the very UN Commission which had submitted the Mehlis report to the UN Security Council is raising serious doubts about the reliability and credibility of al-Siddiq's declarations, since it was revealed that the alleged former officer of the Syrian secret services had in reality been convicted more than once for penal offenses related to money subtraction. (An English synopsis of the Der Spiegel article can be found here.) The Syrians are by no means angels; few of the régimes in the area are run by angels. But even if Bush's motives were of the purest -- and as anyone who's studied the history of the PNAC platoon (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, etc.) knows, Bush's motives are NOT of the purest -- Bush simply can't be trusted to do régime change properly. (Just look at Iraq and Afghanistan.) [UPDATE: Bob Parry over at The Consortium is also apparently deeply skeptical of the Mehlis/al-Siddiq report. I got an e-mail teaser, but it wasn't up on the Consortium's website just yet. Will keep an eye peeled.] [Later UPDATE: Here's Bob Parry's take. Yeah, he's suspicious.]
I'm disappointed that the UN isn't able to tell the difference between a source and a liar, they might as well be the Bush administration or the NYT.
: 10/22/2005 03:20:00 PM 
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