{"id":781,"date":"2004-06-09T17:12:52","date_gmt":"2004-06-09T17:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/06\/09\/chalabi-and-miami\/"},"modified":"2004-06-09T17:12:52","modified_gmt":"2004-06-09T17:12:52","slug":"chalabi-and-miami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/06\/09\/chalabi-and-miami\/","title":{"rendered":"Chalabi and Miami"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>I've just finished Jane Mayer's looong <i>New Yorker<\/i> article on Ahmad Chalabi, \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/fact\/content\/?040607fa_fact1_a\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Manipulator<\/a>,\" about which more later.<\/p>\n<p>This paragraph, in particular, struck me as a reminder that Chalabi is hardly the first of his kind to have such an influence on American foreign policy:<\/p>\n<p><i>Ahmad Chalabi was born on October 30, 1944, into one of Iraq\u2019s wealthiest and most influential Shiite families. When the 1958 revolution forced his family into exile, it lost much of its fortune, including what Chalabi said were \u201ca million-plus square metres of land\u201d of prime property in central Baghdad, which he now intends to reclaim. He told an American friend that his father, before going into exile, had had more land and industrial power than anyone else in Iraq. His forebears leveraged their fortune into political clout by performing favors for the powerful, such as paying off the personal debts of the royal family. In his lifetime, Chalabi\u2019s grandfather held posts in nine Cabinets. Chalabi\u2019s father was president of the senate and an adviser to the king.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>His family once had great wealth and power, you see, but then the revolution came in <strike>1959<\/strike> 1958 and he was forced into exile, dreaming of the day when he would return to <strike>Havana<\/strike> Baghdad and reclaim the wealth and privilege that he believes are rightfully his.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished Jane Mayer&#8217;s looong New Yorker article on Ahmad Chalabi, &#8220;The Manipulator,&#8221; about which more later. This paragraph, in particular, struck me as a reminder that Chalabi is hardly the first of his kind to have such an influence on American foreign policy: Ahmad Chalabi was born on October 30, 1944, into one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iraq"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Chalabi and Miami<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I&#039;ve just finished Jane Mayer&#039;s looong New Yorker article on Ahmad Chalabi, &quot;The Manipulator,&quot; about which more later. This paragraph,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/06\/09\/chalabi-and-miami\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chalabi and Miami\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#039;ve just finished Jane Mayer&#039;s looong New Yorker article on Ahmad Chalabi, &quot;The Manipulator,&quot; about which more later. This paragraph,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/06\/09\/chalabi-and-miami\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-06-09T17:12:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/06\/09\/chalabi-and-miami\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2004\/06\/09\/chalabi-and-miami\/\",\"name\":\"Chalabi and Miami\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2004-06-09T17:12:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2004-06-09T17:12:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\"},\"description\":\"I&#039;ve just finished Jane Mayer&#039;s looong New Yorker article on Ahmad Chalabi, &quot;The Manipulator,&quot; about which more later. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Chalabi and Miami","description":"I&#039;ve just finished Jane Mayer&#039;s looong New Yorker article on Ahmad Chalabi, &quot;The Manipulator,&quot; about which more later. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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