Exit Strategy

BY Ed FELIEN

Most analysts agree that Bush will start to bring the troops home this spring, just in time to influence the mid-term elections.

He began the Iraq war perfectly timed for the 2002 Congressional elections. He did it on such short notice and he whipped up such a patriotic fervor that it was difficult to question whether Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaida or whether he had weapons of mass destruction. It was masterfully orchestrated with Bush touring the country over and over rallying the troops to avenge the innocents lost on 9/11 and smite “the evil ones.” The country was bamboozled and the Republicans ended up controlling both houses of Congress.

This time around Karl Rove probably has visions of Victory Parades in Smalltown, USA, with proud troops marching down Main Street to cries from an adoring crowd of “Well done, America!”

Only sulking leftist spoilsports would dare interrupt that Norman Rockwell fantasy with tragic realities.

The first step in the calculated withdrawal of U.S. ground troops had to be the establishment of a “legitimate” Iraqi government. This meant calling for a Constitutional Convention to write a Constitution and call for elections. The first rule of meetings is that the people that call the meeting, run the meeting. The U.S. CIA picked the people to run the meeting and set up the rules. So the CIA ran the people that ran the meeting that ran the elections that would eventually run the government.

But no election run by the CIA and the Republican Party would be complete without one inspired dirty trick. The CIA’s man in Iraq has always been Ahmad Chalabi. He’s the one that gave Bush all the great information about weapons of mass destruction, and he’s always been on the inside track to run Iraq for the United States and the CIA. Of course, the CIA appointed him to the Constitutional Convention, and, of course, he was appointed to the interim government (as Oil Minister and then as Deputy Prime Minister). Before the election it was beginning to look as though he was too obvious a U.S. stooge. So, in a brilliant publicity stunt—a major media manipulation—U.S. armed forces staged a raid on Chalabi’s house supposedly looking for evidence that he’d been trading secrets with the Iranian government. Chalabi is Shiite, but the Shiites didn’t trust him, so the United States threatened to arrest him and publicly disowned him for being too close to the Iranian Shiites. It cemented his Shiite anti-American credentials and was thought to assure him a seat in the Parliament. But Chalabi became a victim of his own ego. When the Shiite coalition of which he was part refused to promise him the post of Prime Minister, he broke off from the coalition and formed his own party. His party did not receive the 40,000 votes necessary to win a seat in the Parliament. They were 8,000 votes short. Chalabi should have been outside the government, but, given his cunning and the bales of money the United States was willing to spend, it was premature to sweep him into the dustbin of history.

In fact, this past weekend he was resurrected once again. The interim Prime Minister appointed him interim Oil Minister. How did this happen? The official Oil Minister, Ibrahim Bahr Uloom, went on a month vacation rather than continue to implement the unpopular measures of raising gasoline prices. Saddam Hussein had kept gas prices at 3 or 4 cents a gallon. The interim government raised them to 40 cents a gallon and wanted to raise them further. This set off a wave of protests and encouraged the insurgency. Why did the interim government decide to raise prices? Because the International Monetary Fund demanded that Iraqi gasoline be sold at market rates in order for the IMF to wipe out 80 percent of their debt of $120 billion to the World Bank. In other words, they’re saying, “We’ll give you $96 billion if you’ll raise your gas prices.”

Of course, no elected official wants the unpopular job of bankrupting an already impoverished and unemployed electorate. So the Oil Minister went on vacation to protest. And the United States and the Iraqi leadership used that opportunity to move Chalabi into that coveted position. Just as a reminder, Paul Wolfowitz, the former Deputy Defense Minister under Rumsfeld, the architect of the Iraq war and former sponsor of Chalabi to the CIA and Defense Department, is President of the World Bank.

It is not unreasonable to conclude that the United States is manipulating the Iraqi govern