Iraqi Exiles Still Getting Paid, Despite False Intelligence

Seattle Times

How do I get Ahmad Chalabi's job? How?

This is beyond incredible.

The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war.

The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmad Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official.

Chalabi, let it never be forgotten, is currently sentenced to 22 years of hard labor in Jordan, because he embezzled millions of dollars from a bank he founded there.

This convicted felon then gave Bush scads of lies and inaccurate intelligence to get us to invade Iraq, and now Bush is gift-wrapping the entire country for him. Oh, yeah, and he and his buddies are war profiteering with sweetheart Pentagon supply and security contracts.

The most recent contract, for $327 million to supply equipment for the Iraqi Armed Forces, was awarded last month and drew an immediate challenge from a losing contester, who said the winning bid was so low that it questions the "credibility" of that bid.

But it is an $80-million contract, awarded by the Coalition Provisional Authority last summer to provide security for Iraq's vital oil infrastructure, that has become a controversial lightning rod within the Iraqi Provisional Government and the security industry.

Soon after this security contract was issued, the company started recruiting many of its guards from the ranks of Chalabi's former militia, the Iraqi Free Forces, raising allegations from other Iraqi officials that he was creating a private army.

...An industry source familiar with some of the internal affairs of both companies said Chalabi received a $2-million fee for helping arrange the contract. Chalabi, in a brief interview with Newsday, denied that claim, as did a top company official. Chalabi also denied that he has had anything to do with the security firm.

Somebody get this man a ticket to Jordan, pronto. His fifteen minutes of fame is long over.