Chalabi went to Unversity of Chicago

[Stephanie]

August 2, 2003
"My Alma Mater is a Moral Cesspool"
Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies and the University of Chicago
By FRANCIS A. BOYLE
Professor of Law, University of Illinois School of Law

<snip>

These pro-Israeli Neo-cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss, who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in their Department of Political Science. The best expose of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protege, co-author, and literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process by Chicago's Straussian cabal.

Chicago routinely trained me and numerous other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. The University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967. Many of his "lawyers" at the Department of Injustice are members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, and totalitarian Federalist Society (aka "Feddies"), which originated in part at the University of Chicago.

<snip>

Just recently the University of Chicago officially celebrated its Bush Jr. Straussian cabal, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69, Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72, Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79, together with faculty members Bellow, X '39 and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's book "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy." It is correct to assert that Bloom's rant helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly claim that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy."

[aquart]

1. And this is Israel's fault, how?

Because the article has been cut to make it appear that the big crime is being pro-Israeli, yet not another line here refers to it.

Odd. Or maybe not so odd.

It is after midnight, after all, when things come out and crawl.

[Stephanie]

3. Abby, it was not cut to make it appear anything

I was trying to get the most information in, not comment about Israel. I am too ignorant to comment on Israel. And I don't know anything about the writer, his tone is a little alarming. But I think it's pertinent information that Chalabi is an old SCHOOL CHUM of Wolfowitz's, don't you? They sold him as an Iraqi exile. He left Iraq as a CHILD.

[gottaB]

2. When you think "War Crimes College"

Do you think like Fort Benning, or University of Chicago?

[rudeboy666]

4. need the whole article

I'm sorry, but this article sounds more like a mere rant(with many tired cliches) than a serious article by a scholar.

[Stephanie]

11. Sorry, forgot link

http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle08022003.html

Yes, it's a rant and a little bit nutty. But the point is that Chalabi is not some exiled Iraqi Freedom Fighter. He is an old school buddy of the neo-cons. He's an insider.

[gumby]

5. Please check this out

There was a wonderful program on Wisconsin Public Radio on this topic.

You can hear it at you leisure at http://www.wpr.org/ideas/programnotes.cfm?dteDate=5/24/2004
Go to the 9:00 am program.

If that link doesn't work, go to http://www.wpr.org/ideas/programnotes.cfm and find May, 24 programs.

It's a really good discussion. Worth a listen

[immune2irony]

6. George Bush went to Yale

Along with Bill Clinton, Hillary, and John kerry.

What's your point?

The Straussians dominated the Political science/political philosophy/School of Social Thought department of U Chicago, which is reknown for its social science academics.

Chalabi studied mathematics. About as far from politics as you can get.

So what?

[Snazzy]

7. clearly you are immune2irony

:toast:

[JawJaw]

8. Old Friends

Yeah, Bush studied history, but he's not exactly noted for his skills as a historian is he? More important were the CONTACTS that Chalabi made in Chicago.

From Prospect Magazine Nov 2002


What makes Chalabi so attractive to the Washington war party? Most importantly, he's a co-thinker: a mathematician trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago and a banker (who years ago hit it off with Albert Wohlstetter, the theorist who was a godfather of the neoconservative movement), a fellow mathematician and a University of Chicago strategist. In 1985, Wohlstetter (who died in 1997) introduced Chalabi to Perle, then the undersecretary of defense for international-security policy under President Reagan and one of Wohlstetter's leading acolytes. The two have been close ever since. In early October, Perle and Chalabi shared a podium at an American Enterprise Institute conference called "The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq," which was held, appropriately enough, in AEI's 12th-floor Wohlstetter Conference Center. "The Iraqi National Congress has been the philosophical voice of free Iraq for a dozen years," Perle told me.

[benburch]

9. Makes me ashamed of my Alma Mater

But yeah, it's a nest of conservatives.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. Bloom - what a dope

"The Closing of the American Mind" too bad he's not alive to see REALLY closed minds.

[Stephanie]

12. Another article:

The analyst
Strategy guru Albert Wohlstetter spent decades arguing for military flexibility and precision targeting. But have his Washington disciples learned his real lessons?

By Neil Swidey, Globe Staff, 5/18/2003

<snip>

Though his name is not well known, Albert Wohlstetter was one of the great defense intellectuals of the 20th century. A systems analyst with a background in mathematics, he spent his career studying the intricate logic of using military force, and training his disciples to do the same.

Many of those acolytes now hold considerable sway within the Bush administration. Foremost among them is Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and chief architect of current Pentagon policy in the Middle East, who studied under Wohlstetter while earning his doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago. (''Paul thinks the way Albert thinks,'' says Perle.) Other former Wohlstetter students include Zalmay Khalilzad, the Bush administration's special envoy to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and Paul Kozemchak, an official with DARPA, the Defense Department office charged with ''radical innovation.'' A host of other notables, ranging from Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi to the high-tech weaponry guru and longtime Pentagon strategist Andrew Marshall, traveled in Wohlstetter's circles.

<snip>

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Wohlstetter began to focus on the new dangers facing the remaining superpower. He was particularly concerned with the Persian Gulf, having led a Defense Department study in the 1970s showing that the Pentagon had overestimated American military access to the region and undervalued its strategic import. Following the Gulf War, he lambasted the first Bush administration for allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power.

It was a view shared by Wolfowitz and Perle, among others. Wohlstetter also called on the United States to aid Iraqi dissidents aiming to overthrow Hussein, allying himself closely with Ahmed Chalabi. (Perle, now a leading supporter of Chalabi's bid to lead the new Iraq, says Wohlstetter introduced him to the Iraqi exile.) And Wohlstetter became obsessed with the ethnic cleansing going on in Bosnia, hammering Western leaders for preventing the victims from arming themselves. For him, Iraq and Bosnia were closely linked, and emblematic of the dangers confronting a post-Cold War America. In the 1995 Wall Street Journal piece, he wrote: ''The successful coalition in the Gulf War stopped too soon and... left in place a Ba'ath dictatorship nearly sure to revive its programs for getting weapons of mass terror that would menace its neighbors and some countries far beyond them. That told Slobodan Milosevic, who is not a slow learner, that the West would be even less likely, four months later, to stop his own overt use of the Yugoslav Federal Army to create a Greater Serbia purged of non-Serbs.''

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/05/18/the_analyst/