McCain’s consigliere lobbied for Iranian agent Ahmed Chalabi. And McCain criticizes Obama for just offering to talk to Iran?
McCain consigliere and top-drawer Washington lobbyist Charlie Black thinks that Barack Obama’s willingness to talk with the Iranian government shows that he’s naive and incapable of defending the country.
Black, of course, has been a long-time ally of Ahmed Chalabi, who turns out to be an Iranian agent (not that we didn’t more or less know that already) as well as a general-purpose crook. Chalabi is the guy who provided all the false intel about Saddam Hussein and WMD as a way of getting the US to act as his cat’s-paw, and bragged about it later.
Update Marc Ambidner reports that the lobbyists for foreign interests who run the McCain campaign have decided to ask the other people working for the McCain campaign about their lobbying and foreign-agent activities. But he speculates that this comes too late to prevent damage to the McCain brand.
Ya think?
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman