Ahmed Chalabi, leader of Iraq's National Congress Party, told the Spanish daily El Pais on 31 July 2004 that Washington's security strategy for Iraq had failed and needed to be abandoned.
His core objection was the plan's provision to reintegrate former Baath Party members into the system. He argued that loyalists of the Saddam Hussein regime would never accept the new government, and that restoring their position would expand their capacity for attacks, not reduce it.
Once a favored ally of Vice President Dick Cheney and senior Pentagon officials, Chalabi had fallen out of American favor. U.S. officials alleged he had passed classified intelligence to Iran, and he and his party faced accusations of supplying fabricated weapons-of-mass-destruction claims that helped justify the 2003 invasion.
He said the plan also shut out Iraqi opposition groups that had resisted Saddam and would strengthen intelligence networks tied to Washington-friendly neighboring states. The insurgency, he insisted, was organized Baathist activity; foreign militants were, in his words, "only a small part."
Saddam had left the Baath Party roughly a billion dollars along with weapons and explosives, Chalabi said. Disarmament was unlikely, he added, as long as the government remained unable to protect its own population.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in July 2004, in its own words.