Onward and upward with the rule of law.
Following up on our post of two weeks ago, Ahmed Chalabi’s nephew Salem has now been appointed “general director” of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal which will try, among others, Saddam Hussein.
Salem, you’ll remember, earlier went into the war contracting and lobbying business with the law partner of Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, a prime architect of the war, and the Pentagon official in charge of the contracting process.
And, no, I’m not making any of this up.
From this article, it seems that the spokesman of Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, Entefadh Qanbar, is also acting as the spokesman for the Tribunal. Perhaps he already is the spokesman for it. It’s just not clear.
In any case, the operation — holding the malefactors of the old regime accountable for their acts — does seem to be becoming a family affair.
Along similar lines, we should still be asking why the CPA, the sovereign authority in Iraq, allowed Chalabi to confiscate the files of the former regime’s secret police to use to blackmail his political enemies. Given these most recent developments, perhaps it will be argued that this was part of some rather broadly construed discovery proceeding pursuant to the Chalabi family’s prosecution of Saddam Hussein. But I would find that rationale less than convincing.
