Who doesn't love Chalabi and fourth generation war?

To start at the beginning, its worth noting that half a month ago, 53 percent of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, and 7 in 10 called the casualties unacceptable.

William Lind is conservative as hell, but he makes a point about how worthless an idea "the Official Iraqi Insurgency" really is:

I think Fourth Generation theory enables us to gain a better perspective on the current situation than we obtain from arguing [which side] is ahead on points. From a Fourth Generation perspective, we need to remind ourselves that the terms we all use, myself included, such as "the insurgency" or "the resistance," are an inherently misleading shorthand. In Malaya or Algeria or Vietnam, one could speak of the opponent as a something. In Fourth Generation situations such as Iraq, one cannot. There is no single opponent. Rather, what we face is a vast array of armed elements operating outside the control of the state. They range from true insurgents, such as the Baathists, through kidnappers, gangs of robbers, hostile tribes, foreign mujaheddin seeking martyrdom and party or faction militias to men out to avenge their family’s honor. The essence of the problem is not that they are fighting the American occupation – some are, some aren’t – but that they are armed elements not controlled by the state. Their very existence undermines the state to the point where it becomes a fiction.

...we see that the American challenge is not merely defeating an insurgency but re-creating an Iraqi state. Attaining that goal can be very far away even if "the insurgents" lose. If "the insurgency" were defeated tomorrow, remaining obstacles would still include a general breakdown of order in Iraqi society, mutual hatreds among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds (one possible turn of events is that the Shiites and the Sunni "insurgents" might unite against the Kurds over Kirkuk), basic services such as power and water that don’t work, a dead economy that leaves most Iraqis un- or under-employed and an unworkable political system imposed by foreigners (how did Bremer & Co. forget that in our political system, we require two-thirds majorities when we want to make any action almost impossible?). Looming over everything is the question of legitimacy: how can a state be legitimate when its government is a foreign creation propped up by foreign troops?

For America to win in Iraq, it has to leave behind a real state. Further, that state must not be an enemy to America. The chance of meeting just the second requirement is small, given the Iraqi people’s resentment toward the occupation and the strongly Islamic character of any likely new regime. It is improbable that we will meet the first requirement either. We may leave behind us the form of a state – a capital, a parliament, a government, etc. – but in most of the country, the real power will remain where it is now, in the hands of armed elements operating outside the state. That is true whether we defeat "the insurgency" or not.

Contrary to what a number of writers on 4GW have said, Fourth Generation war is not merely a new name for insurgency or guerilla warfare. What is at stake in 4GW is not who rules the state, but the fate of the state itself.

This was an earlier article, and Lind added recently about drug cartels and guerillas running circles around the kludgy state system:

Paraguay illustrates another effective technique non-state forces use against armed forces of the state: taking them from within. The Washington Times article quotes the U.S. State Department's 2005 International Narcotics Strategy Report concerning corruption and inefficiency within the Paraguayan National Police, who have been accused of protecting Brazilian narcotics traffickers. What a surprise! Given the profits involved in drug smuggling, how hard would it be to buy off some Paraguayan cops? Or all Paraguayan cops?

Meanwhile, drug smugglers and guerilla forces like the FARC work together more easily than states do. The state system is old, creaky, formalistic, and slow. Drug-dealing and guerilla warfare represent a free market, where deals happen fast. Several years ago, a Marine friend went down to Bolivia as part of the U.S. counter-drug effort. He observed that the drug traffickers went through the Boyd cycle, or OODA Loop, six times in the time it took us to go through it once. When I relayed that to Colonel Boyd, he said, "Then we're not even in the game."

The OODA loop is interesting. that is what I'd say. As long as we are snooping around the right wing, I'd add "The Reality of Red-State Fascism" by Llewellyn H Rockwell.

also want to note a bit by ex-CIA "anonymous" Michael Scheuer, talking about the whitewash job of the 9/11 commission, fuzzing over Iraq and intelligence issues..

No "red teams" – experts who simulate enemy forces – challenged prewar intelligence on Iraq. "Structure" creates nothing; managers create red teams. It is an aberration in community practice not to have had Iraq intelligence red-teamed before the war. The absence of red teams means intelligence community leaders knew the analytic answer they wanted, or were told by administration officials the answer to deliver.

How's them apples? The Robb-Silberman report is the third coat of whitewash meant to make Americans think effective intelligence reform is underway. The commissions have produced institutional chaos and debilitating bureaucratic growth, not movement toward reform that builds on intelligence-community strengths and better defends America. In a successful effort to protect their patrons in the aristocracy of power, the commissioners let the culpable escape. Worse, they saddled America with the absurd intelligence community "structure" demanded by the uninformed 9/11 families, installed by a Congress and president who followed polls, not conscience, and led by many of the same bureaucrats who got us to 9/11 and Iraq.

Huzzah! Everyone's favorite Scheming Exile is back in play! Oil analyst and executive types are not really happy. This is yet another example of the Bushies permitting something to occur that is obviously against the interests of their favorite groups of people.

If Chalabi gets a permanent job at the oil ministry, even as a deputy rather than the oil minister, it will signal that politics rules over engineering, said Daniel Sternoff, director of geopolitics at Medley Global Advisors.

"The oil technocrats and engineers will be extremely unhappy if Chalabi is named full-time (minister or deputy minister)," said Sternoff. "These are people who suffered under Saddam and his over-politization of the oil ministry, choosing politics over what is best for Iraq and its oil industry."

The WaPo story on Chalabi:

"Having two close members of the same family in two key economic ministries may raise questions for the Iraqis and those who want to do business in Iraq," said Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East Forum at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Chalabi's checkered career is already tainted by allegations of corruption.

In Iraq, he faces a suspended charge of counterfeiting for allegedly reproducing old Iraqi dinars removed from circulation after Saddam's ouster. He was never arrested because the Interior Ministry refused to follow up on the warrant.

He is also still wanted in Jordan for a 1992 conviction in absentia of embezzlement, fraud, and breach of trust after a bank he ran collapsed with about $300 million in missing deposits. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison _ but hasn't served a day.
[......]
Chalabi's standing with Iraqis was tenuous when he returned home in 2003 under the patronage of the United States. Using a private militia, he took over an exclusive social club in an affluent Baghdad suburb and made it the headquarters for the Iraqi National Congress, the anti-Saddam movement he headed in exile.

Since then, Iraqi security forces have raided his offices and militants shot at his convoy.

Chalabi's return from political exile began to take shape when he volunteered to mediate a truce with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia battled U.S. troops in two separate rebellions last year. Left out of the interim government by then U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, Chalabi decided to build his support base among other Shiites.

Chalabi promised that if he became prime minister, he would drop murder charges against al-Sadr. He also spearheaded a drive against members of the former regime who had returned to positions in the interim government.

Justin Raimondo sputters and howls that this guy, who recently informed Iran that U.S. intelligence had acquired the ability to decrypt their communications, is now the point man for Iraqi oil. There is of course a profound connection between Chalabi, the neoconservatives and the fake war intelligence, and Raimondo speculates that this is really a vindication for the neo-cons, as well as a twisted geopolitical outcome that could work out in Israel's favor. I don't know what to make of that, but it is interesting:

Both Chalabi and the neoconservatives have a history of close ties with Israel: many of the latter have strong links to the far-right wing of Israel's Likud party. If Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and his co-conspirators passed U.S. Secrets to Israel, then why not to Chalabi as well?

Any attempt to trace the pattern of treason – was it Neocons > Chalabi > Tehran, or Neocons > Israel > Tehran? – may be forestalled if not completely terminated if and when Chalabi emerges from the smoke-filled back rooms of Iraqi politics the victor.

With Chalabi installed as Iraq's prime minister, an investigation into his spying activities would become highly inconvenient for the U.S. government. Pressing an inquiry into Chalabi-gate under those circumstances would raise a number of embarrassing questions, the first being: Did over 1,500 Americans die so that an Iranian double agent who passed U.S. Secrets to our enemies could be elevated to power in Baghdad?
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There is another diner at the postwar feast, with the second-largest portion bitten off by our closest ally in the region, namely Israel. According to Seymour Hersh, the Israelis long ago concluded that the war against the Iraqi insurgency was unsustainable: their "Plan B," now that the Americans have botched it, is to pour money and intelligence operatives into Kurdistan. Ostensibly undertaken to keep a close watch on Iranian nuclear facilities, this effort extends Israeli influence into the very heart of the formerly Arab world.

Just think: If Chalabi becomes prime minister, he can keep his promise to build a pipeline from oil-rich Kirkuk, in Kurdistan, to Israel. If not, the Israelis can always push their Kurdish allies to opt for independence, in which case the pipeline could be built anyway – once the "Cedar Revolution" spawns a color-coded twin across the border in Syria.

Forgetting the grandiloquent promises of the inimitable Chalabi, however, the Israeli penetration of Kurdistan makes perfect sense in the context of American pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to make yet more concessions on the Palestinian question. If the Americans keep insisting on a viable Palestinian state and pressing for the dismantling of settlements, the Israelis can always tweak them where it hurts: in Iraq.

Hot damn, now that would be a twist. Project for the Old American Century and their sweet Iran-Contra page... check out what they were doing before...

Meanwhile in more miscellaneous news: Wiggy shit about DARPA. Notes from the late Marla Ruzicka, peace worker killed in Iraq [1 2 3].

"The day I prayed with George W. Bush to receive Jesus"

A Jim Lobe classic about the Neocon network. Paranoia strikes as CIA officials remove documents from Sen. Scoop Jackson's archives at the U of Washington back in February. Random but funny...