UNSCAM: Could It Have Prompted The Raid On Chalabi?

Friends of Saddam has a link to a Telegraph story that seems to suggest that the US raid on Ahmad Chalabi's place might have been prompted in part by the documents Chalabi claims to possess that could expose politicians, governments and the UN itself as having received kickbacks from the Oil For Food program.

Kind of makes me wonder whether these allegations that Chalabi has been feeding the U.S. with Iranian disinformation and spying for Iran are meant to discredit him and the documents he may possess. It also makes me wonder why Chalabi didn't turn those documents over to the U.S. months ago.

iMedia Chesapeake

I want to thank Rick Parkhill and the rest of the crew over at iMedia for once again putting together a spectacular summit event. Rick was nice enough to invite me to the event, but Jim Meskauskas from our office was already attending. When I told Rick I didn't want to have both Jim and I out of the office for the entire summit, he was really cool about it and told me I could come down for the weekend opening and head back after the weekend, which was really nice of him. I even got to bring Sara.

The session I most wanted to attend was the Aspen Group meeting on Sunday, which was phenomenal - scores of media directors and high-level media people talking about industry issues, how to get past them and concentrating on helping to build the buyer-seller relationship. I learned a lot, especially about a couple industry initiatives that have not been well-publicized.

On top of that, I think I have about a dozen new Spin topics, thanks to the discussions I had over the weekend with many of the high-level media and sales folks in the industry.

Thanks to Rick, Scott, Jeanne, Jo, Alan, Mike and the rest of the iMedia crew.

Shot, Strangled, Asphyxiated, Raped

More torture details are revealed.

Atrios is pointing to a Washington Post article that says documents obtained by the Post indicate several photographed victims of abuse were not being softened up for interrogation, but were being punished for crimes or simply being treated as toys for their jailers' amusement.

First we were told these instances of abuse were isolated incidents. Then we were given the interrogation 'non-excuse excuse' for torturing prisoners. (I say it's a "non-excuse" because the need for information doesn't excuse rape and other torture.) Now we're being told that instances of abuse are fairly commonplace and being carried out by a number of individuals meting out their own form of justice, or simply appealing to their own sadistic tendencies.

Defense Intelligence Agency: It's All Iran's Fault

Ahmad Chalabi: International Man of Mystery

The Defense Intelligence Agency says that for years, a US-funded arm of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been spying for Iran, funneling ultra top secret information to the Iranians while passing disinformation back to the U.S. Here's the quote of the decade:

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

In other words, this cluster fuck of a war is not our fault. Iran made us do it.

Damn, I had my money on North Korea as the next Axis of Evil country we'd get into a tussle with. When do you think the cruise missiles will start flying?