FROM THE SUB-OPTIMAL TIMING DEPARTMENT (via ef brown)

The Petra Bank Scandal: Jordan slandered my father at Saddam's behest. TAMARA CHALABI, August 7, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

Ahmad Chalabi, my father, is here in Iraq, sitting on the Governing Council of Iraqi nationals that will help ours become a free country. Iraqis from all regions and religions line up daily to meet him at his home. They know his lifelong cause is democracy for all Iraqis, not just a chosen few. To them he is a good man, and an attractive leader.
Yet many in the Western media seem unable to mention my father's name without regurgitating a 14-year-old Jordanian libel that he wrongfully diverted assets of his own Petra Bank. The real story couldn't be more different. Petra Bank was seized and destroyed by those in the Jordanian establishment who'd become willing to do Saddam Hussein's bidding. That Jordan has branded my father as an "asset diverter" would be comic, were it not for what it says about that kingdom's servile complicity with Saddam.

In 1978, Ahmad Chalabi formed Petra Bank in Amman. It prospered, growing to be the second largest bank in Jordan. In the '80s, as a pillar of Jordan's banking system, he fought to obstruct Saddam's ability to finance his war with Iran, as well as his weapons programs. He warned about a grain-sales financing scheme, whereby Iraq obtained funds from the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank to finance arms purchases. He challenged the ways in which Jordan profited from arms sales to Iraq and angered Saddam by pressuring Jordan's Central Bank not to issue Iraq letters of credit on Saddam's terms.

In early 1989, Petra submitted its annual financial statement to the Central Bank, showing continuing asset growth--and nothing that would justify singling it out for military seizure. The authorities approved the financial accounts, just as they had in the past. Petra Bank, if left alone, would be prospering today. Instead, here is the sequence of events [...]

Jordan did all this for Saddam Hussein.

One might prefer that this hadn't been run on the day the Jordanian embassy in Iraq was bombed. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 8, 2003 11:43 AM