Wafiq al-Samarrai is an unpunished war criminal, a colleague of the infamous international liar and crook, Ahmed Chalabi, and an enemy of the Iranian regime. It is therefore no surprise that The Associated Press is reporting his latest spiel as if it was credible.
In an August 26 headline, “Iraqi adviser says he quit to speak against Iran,” a nameless AP editor tells us that Samarrai quit his day job as security adviser to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to try his hand at exposing the role of the Iranian Quds Force in Iraq, as well as the “threat by Iranian influence to global security, the Middle East and (Persian) Gulf regions.” [1]
(Apparently, the folks at the IPC, the CPD, and SPC aren’t making the progress they had hoped for in this area.)
To corroborate the implication, we are reminded that “[t]he U.S. military has said the Quds Force arms, equips and finances Shiite Muslim militiamen who it says are responsible for the death of hundreds of American soldiers” — itself, a thus far unproven claim.
We are told by the absentee AP editor that Samarrai was implicated in, but not charged for, Saddam Hussein’s genocidal aggressions against the Kurds of N. Iraq back in the ’80s (and early ’90s), when he was serving as Hussein’s intelligence chief.
AP’s phantom editor then tells us that the ethnic cleansing ”left tens of thousands of Kurds dead, but Talabani, himself a Kurd, has said in the past that al-Samarraie [sic] was not involved,” as if this was an exoneration by itself.
But what we’re not told is that Samarrai held his position of military responsibility up until late 1994, when he defected from Iraq and eventually joined Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC), where he was part of the campaign of lies and deception pushing for the illegal bombing, invasion, and regime change against Iraq.
This is widely-known information, so for all the speculation and innuendo AP editors are known to engage in, they could have at least pondered the possibility of Samarrai’s being connected to INC or other so-called opposition group. Instead, AP’s shallow dig concludes abruptly thus: “Al-Samarraie [sic] did not explain in Tuesday’s interview why he was abroad, but he claimed to have survived several assassination attempts that he said were plotted by Iran. He gave no details.”
All the Associated Press had to do was ask Dilip Hiro, Brothers Cockburn, or the reliable sensationalists at the UK Telegraph or USA Today; any of them could have given a succinct background on Samarrai’s dubious past.
For example, his coalescence with Ahmed Chalabi in a failed CIA-supported attempt at overthrowing Saddam back in 1995:
With the defection of Wafiq al Samarrai, the Iraqi military intelligence chief, in December 1994, pressure built from high up in Washington to move against Saddam and replace him with a committee of five generals, including Samarrai. The plan involved an attack by INC troops on the nearby oil cities of Mosul and Kirkuk as a diversionary move while the military plotters in Baghdad stormed the barracks where Saddam had a residence. A five-member CIA team was dispatched from its Langley, Virginia, headquarters to Salahudin. The D-day was March 4, 1995. But at the last minute, listening to the plea by an INA leader who flew to Washington, the White House withdrew its support. Nonetheless, Chalabi made his move along the front lines in Kurdistan. But nothing of substance happened. [2]
Or his baseless claims of Saddam’s extensive ties to so-called Al-Qaeda, less than three months after 9/11:
Wafiq al Samarrai, who headed Iraq’s military intelligence operation before defecting in 1994, also believes Saddam has agents inside al-Qaeda, though he doubts they’re in the upper ranks. The agents “most likely would be from other countries, Egyptians or Jordanians or Yemenis,” he says. “It wouldn’t be Iraqis — the Iraqis in al-Qaeda are few.” [3]
Or his unabashed lust for regime-change and the mass murder of his fellow Iraqis one year later, four months prior to the actual U.S. invasion of Iraq:
Yet while he has long been an advocate of an internal revolt by Saddam’s security apparatus, he almost admits defeat for his strategy.
“A coup is impossible before the start of American bombing,” he said. “All of them are frightened of Saddam Hussein. But when the bombing starts, everything will be different.” [4]
So here’s this career opportunist with a track record of shifting loyalties and plotting murderous regime-change for self-enrichment, being reported on by the AP as if nothing is peculiar about his sudden “coming-out.”
To boot, we’re led to believe that, because the Kurdish president of Iraq says so, Samarrai is not culpable in the anti-Kurdish genocide (even though, at the time, he was one of the highest ranking military men in Saddam’s regime, where he remained for several years hence). Case closed. Oh, and btw, we can’t verify it, but those Iranian Mullahs are trying to kill him.
Wafiq al-Samarrai is a masochistic megalomaniac in the mold of his comrade, Ahmed Chalabi, and other so-called dissidents like Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, co-leaders of the Iranian ”Mujahideen-e Khalq” (MeK; a.k.a., NCRI; a.k.a., PMOI; a.k.a., MKO) and Reza Pahlavi II, eldest son of the ousted U.S. puppet-tyrant, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran.
In fact, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if it turns out that Wafiq al-Samarrai is not only working with one or more of these career insurrectionists, but also being supported, once again, by official U.S. entities.
If true, don’t hold your breath waiting for the fair, balanced, and accountable editors at AP to tell you so.
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