To have Trump commemorate the Normandy landings is to understand the word impostor.
By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist
PARIS — How small he is! Small in spirit, in valor, in dignity, in statecraft, this American president who knows nothing of history and cares still less and now bestrides Europe with his family in tow like some tin-pot dictator with a terrified entourage.
To have Donald Trump — the bone-spur evader of the Vietnam draft, the coddler of autocrats, the would-be destroyer of the European Union, the pay-up-now denigrator of NATO, the apologist for the white supremacists of Charlottesville — commemorate the boys from Kansas City and St. Paul who gave their lives for freedom is to understand the word impostor. You can’t make a sculpture from rotten wood.
It’s worth saying again. If Europe is whole and free and at peace, it’s because of NATO and the European Union; it’s because the United States became a European power after World War II; it’s because America’s word was a solemn pledge; it’s because that word cemented alliances that were not zero-sum games but the foundation for stability and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.
Of this, Trump understands nothing. Therefore he cannot comprehend the sacrifice at Omaha Beach 75 years ago. He cannot see that the postwar trans-Atlantic achievement — undergirded by the institutions and alliances he tramples upon with such crass truculence — was in fact the vindication of those young men who gave everything.
As Eisenhower, speaking at the Normandy American Cemetery, last resting place of 9,387 Americans, told Walter Cronkite for the 20th anniversary of the D-Day landings: “These people gave us a chance, and they bought time for us, so that we can do better than we have before.”
That was a solemn responsibility. For decades it was met, culminating with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Doing better, however, is not rising nativism, xenophobia, nationalism and authoritarianism given a nod and a wink by the president of the United States. It’s not Brexit, Britain turning its back on the Europe it helped free.
The American moral collapse personified by Trump is not “beautiful” or “phenomenal” or “incredible” or any of the president’s other clunky two-a-penny superlatives. It’s sickening and dangerous.
My impression here is that Europe has gotten used to Trump to the point that it is no longer strange that the American president is a stranger. In less than two and a half years Trump has stripped his office of dignity, authority and values.
His foreign policy increasingly consists of a single word, “tariffs.” His contempt for allies undermines American diplomacy, or whatever is left of it, from Iran to North Korea, from Venezuela to China. His trampling of truth is so consistent that when he says in London that Britain is the largest trading partner of the United States — it’s nowhere near that — the impulse is to shrug.
Before arriving in London, Trump set the tone. He mocked the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, as short. It was a tweet in keeping with the president’s signature stunt as schoolyard bully. Khan, who had criticized “rolling out the red carpet” for Trump, responded by comparing the president to an 11-year-old.
This was generous. Most 8-year-olds know better.
Of course Khan — the brown Muslim son of a bus driver, self-made guy — would get under the skin of a man like Trump, who was born on third base and imbibed his reflexive racism in the family real estate business.
Khan called Trump’s policies — on the reproductive rights of women, on immigrant children at the Mexican border, on “amplifying messages from racists” — the antithesis of Londoners’ values and “abhorrent.” In response, Trump tweeted that Khan was as bad as the “very dumb” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, “only half his height.”
There is something so disturbing about a very small man like Trump impugning the height of the mayor of the great international city he is visiting that even 28 months of progressive inurement to his outrages feels inadequate.
America is much better than this, much better than an American president who, as the cartoonist Dave Granlund suggested, probably thinks the D in D-Day stands for Donald and spends the night of the commemoration trashing Bette Midler on Twitter.
As for the Republican Party, don’t get me started. To recover its bearings the G.O.P. would do well to recall one of its own, Eisenhower, who in that same 20th-anniversary interview said that America and its allies stormed the Normandy beaches “for one purpose only.”
It was not to “fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest.” No, it was “just to preserve freedom, systems of self-government in the world.” It was an act, in other words, consistent with the highest ideals of the American idea that Trump and his Republican enablers seem so intent on eviscerating.
Who here is still proud they pulled the lever for Team Trump Treason?
The unusually long
stay by Nahro al-Kasnazan, who served as a paid CIA informant during the Iraq
War, shows how the hotel attracts foreigners who have an agenda to pursue
with the Trump administration.
By Joshua Partlow, David A. Fahrenthold and Taylor Luck ●Read more »
The unusually long
stay by Nahro al-Kasnazan, who served as a paid CIA informant during the Iraq
War, shows how the hotel attracts foreigners who have an agenda to pursue
with the Trump administration.
By Joshua Partlow, David A. Fahrenthold and Taylor Luck ● Read more »
In
July, a wealthy Iraqi sheikh named Nahro al-Kasnazan wrote letters to
national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
urging them to forge closer ties with those seeking to overthrow the
government of Iran.
Kasnazan wrote of his desire “to achieve our mutual interest to weaken the Iranian Mullahs regime and end its hegemony.”
Four months later, he checked into the Trump International Hotel in Washington and spent 26 nights in a suite on the eighth floor — a visit estimated to have cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It was
an unusually long stay at the expensive hotel. The Washington Post
obtained the establishment’s “VIP Arrivals” lists for dozens of days
last year, including more than 1,200 individual guests. Kasnazan’s visit
was the longest listed.
“We normally stay at
the Hay-Adams hotel,” Kasnazan, 50, said in a recent interview with a
Post reporter in Amman, Jordan, where he lives in a gold-bedecked
mansion and summons his servants by walkie-talkie. “But we just heard
about this new Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., and thought it would be a
good place to stay.”
Kasnazan
said his choice of the Trump hotel was not part of a lobbying effort,
adding that he came to Washington for medical treatment at Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore, about 45 miles away. Kasnazan, who socialized
with State Department officials while in Washington, has set up several
new companies in hopes of doing business with the U.S. government.
His
long visit is an example of how Trump’s D.C. hotel, a popular gathering
place for Republican politicians and people with government business,
has become a favorite stopover for influential foreigners who have an
agenda to pursue with the Trump administration.
A
gallery of would-be foreign leaders — including exiles and upstarts who
cannot always rely on a state-to-state channel to reach Trump’s
government — have been gliding through the polished lobby of the Trump
International Hotel since it opened in 2016.
A
few weeks before Kasnazan checked in, a pair of exiled Thai prime
ministers spent the night. A few weeks after, a Post reporter saw a
Nigerian presidential candidate holding court in the lobby. None
stayed as long as Kasnazan, the leader of an order of Sufi Muslims who
said he served as a paid CIA informant in the run-up to the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003.
These visits offer proximity to Trump’s political orbit — as family members, advisers and fans regularly pass through the hotel and snap selfies at the bar — while putting money into a hotel the president still owns.
“We
saw all the Trumpers,” said Entifadh Qanbar, a Kasnazan spokesman and
aide who was frequently with him at the hotel. “Many ambassadors, many
important people. We didn’t talk to them, but we saw them in the
hallways.”
Stays
at the Trump International Hotel in Washington offer proximity to
President Trump’s political orbit. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington
Post)
The downtown D.C. hotel has emerged as a bright spot in the president’s portfolio at a time when there are signs of declining revenue at some of his other properties. Lobbyists for the Saudi government paid for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel just three months after his election. Executives from the telecom giant T-Mobile booked at least 52 nights there last year.
The
president’s ability to profit from foreign customers, in particular,
while in the White House has drawn sharp criticism. The Trump
Organization is battling a pair of lawsuits, including one filed by Democratic members of Congress,
alleging that the business it does with foreign governments violates
the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars payments to presidents
by foreign states.
The company, which runs the
hotel, declined to answer questions about how much Kasnazan paid for his
stay, or whether it had informed anyone at the White House about the
sheikh’s long visit. The company said it donated the profits of his stay
to the U.S. Treasury as part of a voluntary policy aimed at countering
claims that the president is in violation of the emoluments clause.
Critics argue that the policy is insufficient, saying that the Trump
Organization does not explain how it calculates its foreign profits or
identify its foreign customers.
The Trump
Organization did not say how much the profits were from Kasnazan’s stay
and did not explain why in his case it applied the “foreign patronage”
policy, which it has said is for business from foreign governments. He
holds no government office, and his spokesman said he paid the bill
himself.
The
White House and the National Security Council declined to comment about
the visit. State Department officials said that they were not aware of
any official meetings between their personnel and Kasnazan at that time,
but that they could not say whether informal meetings were held.
(continued in next post)
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
Kasnazan
willingly acknowledges an ambitious political agenda: He’s advocating
for a U.S. military confrontation with Iran and wants U.S. help to blunt
Iranian influence in Iraq. He also considers himself a viable candidate
to become president of Iraq — even though others view him as a minor
political figure.
In addition, Kasnazan has
recently registered several companies in the United States to provide
private security, oil field services and construction, and said he is
eager to do business with the Trump administration.
“We are looking for opportunities,” he said.
Kasnazan
checked into the Trump hotel on Nov. 30, a day after his brother, a
former Iraqi trade minister, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in
prison on graft charges. Kasnazan is also facing charges, said Judge
Abdulsatter al-Beriqdar, a spokesman for the Iraqi judiciary.
“Once they are in Iraq, they will be arrested,” al-Beriqdar said.
Kasnazan denies the corruption allegations and says the charges are politically motivated.
“We
saw all the Trumpers,” said Entifadh Qanbar, left, with Kasnazan. The
Kasnazan aide, who was frequently at the hotel, added: “Many
ambassadors, many important people. We didn’t talk to them, but we saw
them in the hallways.” (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for The Washington Post)
Kasnazan
said he paid for a suite and one additional room at the Trump hotel,
and stayed there with his wife and children until Dec. 26. Qanbar, the
spokesman — who for years worked for Ahmed Chalabi, a deceased Iraqi
dissident who helped foment the Iraq War — declined to specify the cost
but estimated that it was a “couple thousand” dollars per night.
Suites
at the Trump hotel range from about $1,000 to $2,000 per night; at the
Hay-Adams, they are about $840 to $1,840 per night.
During
his recent stay in Washington, Kasnazan said, he socialized with some
of the State Department’s Middle East experts outside of the hotel. One
of them, Col. Abbas Dahouk, recently retired as a senior military
adviser at the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and
previously served as a military attache at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi
Arabia.
Dahouk said he viewed Kasnazan’s visit
to the Trump hotel as an effort to make “himself available to talk about
Iraq and to speak truth to power,” while seeking U.S. support for
countering Iranian influence in Iraq.
“It’s easier to meet people” at the hotel, he said. “Maybe indirectly to also show support to Trump.”
“From his perspective, Trump is America,” Dahouk added.
'Mind-blowing' intelligence
Nahro
Kasnazan displays a portrait of his father, Sheikh Mohammad
al-Kasnazan, in his home in Amman. (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for The
Washington Post)
(continued in next post)
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
Kasnazan comes from a
prominent Sufi Muslim family from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
His father, Sheikh Mohammad al-Kasnazan, is the Kurdish leader of a
branch of the Sufi order, a form of Islamic mysticism. In ceremonies,
the Kasnazan Sufis pray and chant and sometimes perform self-mutilation.
Kasnazan
and his siblings had been imprisoned during Saddam Hussein’s
dictatorship. They turned to the Americans for help in the run-up to the
2003 Iraq invasion — and ended up assisting U.S. intelligence
officials.
They met regularly with CIA officers
working from small bases in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan and recruited
dozens of informants from within their Sufi network who worked in
Hussein’s military and intelligence services, as described in the 2004
book “Plan of Attack,” by Bob Woodward.
The
intelligence provided by two Sufi brothers and their network was “so
rare, so mind-blowing,” that the CIA gave them the code name ROCKSTARS,
according to Woodward’s book.
The book does not identify him by name, but Kasnazan confirmed that it described his family’s network.
For their efforts, the CIA paid more than $1 million per month, Kasnazan now estimates.
“It was expenses for the network,” he said.
The CIA declined to comment.
During
the war, Kasnazan turned his network into a private security company,
the Iraqi Establishments Protection Company, winning contracts to
protect U.S. military bases and oil installations, according to U.S.
military documents he provided to The Post.
The
family’s Sufi militiamen were put to work guarding oil companies and
U.S. military installations, such as ammunition depots and the
Civil-Military Operations Center in the northern city of Kirkuk.
The
business was just one part of his ambitions. He considered himself a
natural choice to be president of Iraq. He viewed his Sufi order, which
includes Sunnis and Shiites, as unifiers — a peaceable alternative to
Iranian expansion on one side and al-Qaeda extremism on the other.
But
in 2005, Kasnazan was banned from participating in elections by the
commission that purged Saddam Hussein’s former party loyalists from
government. In the years since, Kasnazan’s political party, the
Coalition for Iraqi National Unity, has not established much of a
footprint.
A portrait of Sheikh Mohammad al-Kasnazan is displayed at his son’s
home in Amman. (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for The Washington Post)
The
family’s most notable political achievement happened in 2014, when
Kasnazan’s brother, Milas Mohammed Abdulkarim , was chosen to be trade
minister. But that quickly ended in scandal.
Iraqi
authorities issued arrest warrants for both brothers in October 2015
following an investigation of bribes and illegal benefits. The case
involved alleged kickbacks connected to rice purchases for Iraq’s
national food ration system.
In November 2018,
Milas Abdulkarim was convicted of graft and sentenced to seven years in
prison. He is living in Iraqi Kurdistan now, his brother said.
Kasnazan,
whose case is still open, according to Iraq’s judiciary, said the
allegations against his family were “fabricated” by political enemies.
He
now lives in exile in Amman, in a palatial home amid marble, crystal
and oil paintings. His furniture is leafed in gold; angel figures perch
on the rims of giant vases.
When particularly
reverent guests arrive, he lets them bow and kiss him on the feet,
according to a video he shared with The Post.
A hard-line position on Iran
Trump’s
arrival in the White House shifted the U.S. government’s view of Iran
closer to Kasnazan’s. He was in favor of Trump’s decision to pull out of
the Iran nuclear deal. He supports the approach of Bolton, who
advocates for regime change in Iran.
Kasnazan
said that he opposes a full U.S. invasion, and that he wants “surgical
U.S. military strikes” against Iranian military and intelligence
installations.
“You ask why would we want war,
but in fact we are not in peace — the violence against Sunnis in Iraq
has never stopped,” Kasnazan said in an interview. “Any retreat from
Bolton’s policy on Iran will lead to a breaking down of America’s
reputation in front of the world.”
He shared
with The Post copies of letters he sent to Bolton and Pompeo last summer
in which he praised the U.S. government’s hard-line approach toward
Iran and offered policy recommendations.
In the
letters, Kasnazan wrote that he was “very encouraged by President
Donald Trump’s objectives to stop Iranian aggression and expansion in
the region.”
A spokesman for Bolton declined to comment. A State Department spokesman said the department was not aware of the letters.
Kasnazan said he supports “surgical” U.S. military strikes against Iran. (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for Washington Post)
During
Trump’s time in office, Kasnazan said he has met with State Department
officials on various occasions, as well as visited think tanks to
advocate for his position against Iran.
During
his long stay at the Trump hotel in November and December, Kasnazan
said, he saw members of Trump’s family at the property, as well as
Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Fox News Channel personalities. But
he said that he didn’t speak with them and that he never saw Trump.
While in town, Kasnazan attended a retirement party for Dahouk, the State Department adviser.
Dahouk
described Kasnazan as an influential figure who has met with officials
from the Near Eastern Affairs and policy planning bureaus.
“He
had an audience, and many concerned officials valued his perspective,”
Dahouk said. “His agenda was to provide an alternate source of
atmospherics about what’s going on in Iraq from a person who has many
devoted followers on the ground.”
Whether
Kasnazan’s networking had any effect on the administration is unknown.
But the sheikh said he feels encouraged by the Trump administration’s
approach to his home region.
His spokesman said he plans to return to Washington soon — although he hasn’t yet chosen a hotel.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
Detroit 2000, Detroit 2003 1-2, Grand Rapids VFC 2004, Philly 2005, Grand Rapids 2006, Detroit 2006, Cleveland 2006, Lollapalooza 2007, Detroit Eddie Solo 2011, Detroit 2014, Chicago 2016 1-2, Chicago 2018 1-2, Ohana Encore 2021 1-2, Chicago Eddie/Earthlings 2022 1-2, Nashville 2022, St. Louis 2022
To have Trump commemorate the Normandy landings is to understand the word impostor.
By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist
PARIS — How small he is! Small in spirit, in valor, in dignity, in statecraft, this American president who knows nothing of history and cares still less and now bestrides Europe with his family in tow like some tin-pot dictator with a terrified entourage.
To have Donald Trump — the bone-spur evader of the Vietnam draft, the coddler of autocrats, the would-be destroyer of the European Union, the pay-up-now denigrator of NATO, the apologist for the white supremacists of Charlottesville — commemorate the boys from Kansas City and St. Paul who gave their lives for freedom is to understand the word impostor. You can’t make a sculpture from rotten wood.
It’s worth saying again. If Europe is whole and free and at peace, it’s because of NATO and the European Union; it’s because the United States became a European power after World War II; it’s because America’s word was a solemn pledge; it’s because that word cemented alliances that were not zero-sum games but the foundation for stability and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.
Of this, Trump understands nothing. Therefore he cannot comprehend the sacrifice at Omaha Beach 75 years ago. He cannot see that the postwar trans-Atlantic achievement — undergirded by the institutions and alliances he tramples upon with such crass truculence — was in fact the vindication of those young men who gave everything.
As Eisenhower, speaking at the Normandy American Cemetery, last resting place of 9,387 Americans, told Walter Cronkite for the 20th anniversary of the D-Day landings: “These people gave us a chance, and they bought time for us, so that we can do better than we have before.”
That was a solemn responsibility. For decades it was met, culminating with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Doing better, however, is not rising nativism, xenophobia, nationalism and authoritarianism given a nod and a wink by the president of the United States. It’s not Brexit, Britain turning its back on the Europe it helped free.
The American moral collapse personified by Trump is not “beautiful” or “phenomenal” or “incredible” or any of the president’s other clunky two-a-penny superlatives. It’s sickening and dangerous.
My impression here is that Europe has gotten used to Trump to the point that it is no longer strange that the American president is a stranger. In less than two and a half years Trump has stripped his office of dignity, authority and values.
His foreign policy increasingly consists of a single word, “tariffs.” His contempt for allies undermines American diplomacy, or whatever is left of it, from Iran to North Korea, from Venezuela to China. His trampling of truth is so consistent that when he says in London that Britain is the largest trading partner of the United States — it’s nowhere near that — the impulse is to shrug.
Before arriving in London, Trump set the tone. He mocked the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, as short. It was a tweet in keeping with the president’s signature stunt as schoolyard bully. Khan, who had criticized “rolling out the red carpet” for Trump, responded by comparing the president to an 11-year-old.
This was generous. Most 8-year-olds know better.
Of course Khan — the brown Muslim son of a bus driver, self-made guy — would get under the skin of a man like Trump, who was born on third base and imbibed his reflexive racism in the family real estate business.
Khan called Trump’s policies — on the reproductive rights of women, on immigrant children at the Mexican border, on “amplifying messages from racists” — the antithesis of Londoners’ values and “abhorrent.” In response, Trump tweeted that Khan was as bad as the “very dumb” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, “only half his height.”
There is something so disturbing about a very small man like Trump impugning the height of the mayor of the great international city he is visiting that even 28 months of progressive inurement to his outrages feels inadequate.
America is much better than this, much better than an American president who, as the cartoonist Dave Granlund suggested, probably thinks the D in D-Day stands for Donald and spends the night of the commemoration trashing Bette Midler on Twitter.
As for the Republican Party, don’t get me started. To recover its bearings the G.O.P. would do well to recall one of its own, Eisenhower, who in that same 20th-anniversary interview said that America and its allies stormed the Normandy beaches “for one purpose only.”
It was not to “fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest.” No, it was “just to preserve freedom, systems of self-government in the world.” It was an act, in other words, consistent with the highest ideals of the American idea that Trump and his Republican enablers seem so intent on eviscerating.
Is it going to be funny when Trump throws his dead father under the bus?
"I had no idea he forced a tenant to say I had bone spurs."
What a dick. People typically sign letters and proclamations at the bottom to endorse what is written above. Trump would have really fucked up the Declaration of Independence if he'd been around. But I guess he's the winner. He got top billing. I'm glad to see he didn't pull out his trusty fat sharpie. That's progress.
"I'll use the magic word - let's just shut the fuck up, please." EV, 04/13/08
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up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,881
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,315
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
A wealthy Iraqi sheikh who urges a hard-line U.S. approach to Iran spent 26 nights at Trump’s D.C. hotel
The unusually long stay by Nahro al-Kasnazan, who served as a paid CIA informant during the Iraq War, shows how the hotel attracts foreigners who have an agenda to pursue with the Trump administration.
By Joshua Partlow, David A. Fahrenthold and Taylor Luck ● Read more »
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Check this out if you haven't already.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/trump-inc-pay-day-at-trump-doral
A wealthy Iraqi sheikh who urges a hard-line U.S. approach to Iran spent 26 nights at Trump’s D.C. hotel
In July, a wealthy Iraqi sheikh named Nahro al-Kasnazan wrote letters to national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging them to forge closer ties with those seeking to overthrow the government of Iran.
Kasnazan wrote of his desire “to achieve our mutual interest to weaken the Iranian Mullahs regime and end its hegemony.”
Four months later, he checked into the Trump International Hotel in Washington and spent 26 nights in a suite on the eighth floor — a visit estimated to have cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It was an unusually long stay at the expensive hotel. The Washington Post obtained the establishment’s “VIP Arrivals” lists for dozens of days last year, including more than 1,200 individual guests. Kasnazan’s visit was the longest listed.
“We normally stay at the Hay-Adams hotel,” Kasnazan, 50, said in a recent interview with a Post reporter in Amman, Jordan, where he lives in a gold-bedecked mansion and summons his servants by walkie-talkie. “But we just heard about this new Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., and thought it would be a good place to stay.”
Kasnazan said his choice of the Trump hotel was not part of a lobbying effort, adding that he came to Washington for medical treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, about 45 miles away. Kasnazan, who socialized with State Department officials while in Washington, has set up several new companies in hopes of doing business with the U.S. government.
His long visit is an example of how Trump’s D.C. hotel, a popular gathering place for Republican politicians and people with government business, has become a favorite stopover for influential foreigners who have an agenda to pursue with the Trump administration.
A gallery of would-be foreign leaders — including exiles and upstarts who cannot always rely on a state-to-state channel to reach Trump’s government — have been gliding through the polished lobby of the Trump International Hotel since it opened in 2016.
[Saudi-funded lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump hotel after 2016 election]
A few weeks before Kasnazan checked in, a pair of exiled Thai prime ministers spent the night. A few weeks after, a Post reporter saw a Nigerian presidential candidate holding court in the lobby. None stayed as long as Kasnazan, the leader of an order of Sufi Muslims who said he served as a paid CIA informant in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
These visits offer proximity to Trump’s political orbit — as family members, advisers and fans regularly pass through the hotel and snap selfies at the bar — while putting money into a hotel the president still owns.
“We saw all the Trumpers,” said Entifadh Qanbar, a Kasnazan spokesman and aide who was frequently with him at the hotel. “Many ambassadors, many important people. We didn’t talk to them, but we saw them in the hallways.”
Stays at the Trump International Hotel in Washington offer proximity to President Trump’s political orbit. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
The downtown D.C. hotel has emerged as a bright spot in the president’s portfolio at a time when there are signs of declining revenue at some of his other properties. Lobbyists for the Saudi government paid for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel just three months after his election. Executives from the telecom giant T-Mobile booked at least 52 nights there last year.
The president’s ability to profit from foreign customers, in particular, while in the White House has drawn sharp criticism. The Trump Organization is battling a pair of lawsuits, including one filed by Democratic members of Congress, alleging that the business it does with foreign governments violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars payments to presidents by foreign states.
The company, which runs the hotel, declined to answer questions about how much Kasnazan paid for his stay, or whether it had informed anyone at the White House about the sheikh’s long visit. The company said it donated the profits of his stay to the U.S. Treasury as part of a voluntary policy aimed at countering claims that the president is in violation of the emoluments clause. Critics argue that the policy is insufficient, saying that the Trump Organization does not explain how it calculates its foreign profits or identify its foreign customers.
The Trump Organization did not say how much the profits were from Kasnazan’s stay and did not explain why in his case it applied the “foreign patronage” policy, which it has said is for business from foreign governments. He holds no government office, and his spokesman said he paid the bill himself.
The White House and the National Security Council declined to comment about the visit. State Department officials said that they were not aware of any official meetings between their personnel and Kasnazan at that time, but that they could not say whether informal meetings were held.
(continued in next post)Kasnazan willingly acknowledges an ambitious political agenda: He’s advocating for a U.S. military confrontation with Iran and wants U.S. help to blunt Iranian influence in Iraq. He also considers himself a viable candidate to become president of Iraq — even though others view him as a minor political figure.
In addition, Kasnazan has recently registered several companies in the United States to provide private security, oil field services and construction, and said he is eager to do business with the Trump administration.
“We are looking for opportunities,” he said.
Kasnazan checked into the Trump hotel on Nov. 30, a day after his brother, a former Iraqi trade minister, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison on graft charges. Kasnazan is also facing charges, said Judge Abdulsatter al-Beriqdar, a spokesman for the Iraqi judiciary.
“Once they are in Iraq, they will be arrested,” al-Beriqdar said.
Kasnazan denies the corruption allegations and says the charges are politically motivated.
“We saw all the Trumpers,” said Entifadh Qanbar, left, with Kasnazan. The Kasnazan aide, who was frequently at the hotel, added: “Many ambassadors, many important people. We didn’t talk to them, but we saw them in the hallways.” (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for The Washington Post)
Kasnazan said he paid for a suite and one additional room at the Trump hotel, and stayed there with his wife and children until Dec. 26. Qanbar, the spokesman — who for years worked for Ahmed Chalabi, a deceased Iraqi dissident who helped foment the Iraq War — declined to specify the cost but estimated that it was a “couple thousand” dollars per night.
Suites at the Trump hotel range from about $1,000 to $2,000 per night; at the Hay-Adams, they are about $840 to $1,840 per night.
[T-Mobile announced a merger needing Trump administration approval. The next day, 9 executives had reservations at Trump’s hotel.]
During his recent stay in Washington, Kasnazan said, he socialized with some of the State Department’s Middle East experts outside of the hotel. One of them, Col. Abbas Dahouk, recently retired as a senior military adviser at the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and previously served as a military attache at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia.
Dahouk said he viewed Kasnazan’s visit to the Trump hotel as an effort to make “himself available to talk about Iraq and to speak truth to power,” while seeking U.S. support for countering Iranian influence in Iraq.
“It’s easier to meet people” at the hotel, he said. “Maybe indirectly to also show support to Trump.”
“From his perspective, Trump is America,” Dahouk added.
Nahro Kasnazan displays a portrait of his father, Sheikh Mohammad al-Kasnazan, in his home in Amman. (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for The Washington Post)
Kasnazan comes from a prominent Sufi Muslim family from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. His father, Sheikh Mohammad al-Kasnazan, is the Kurdish leader of a branch of the Sufi order, a form of Islamic mysticism. In ceremonies, the Kasnazan Sufis pray and chant and sometimes perform self-mutilation.
Kasnazan and his siblings had been imprisoned during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. They turned to the Americans for help in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion — and ended up assisting U.S. intelligence officials.
They met regularly with CIA officers working from small bases in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan and recruited dozens of informants from within their Sufi network who worked in Hussein’s military and intelligence services, as described in the 2004 book “Plan of Attack,” by Bob Woodward.
The intelligence provided by two Sufi brothers and their network was “so rare, so mind-blowing,” that the CIA gave them the code name ROCKSTARS, according to Woodward’s book.
The book does not identify him by name, but Kasnazan confirmed that it described his family’s network.
For their efforts, the CIA paid more than $1 million per month, Kasnazan now estimates.
“It was expenses for the network,” he said.
The CIA declined to comment.
During the war, Kasnazan turned his network into a private security company, the Iraqi Establishments Protection Company, winning contracts to protect U.S. military bases and oil installations, according to U.S. military documents he provided to The Post.
The family’s Sufi militiamen were put to work guarding oil companies and U.S. military installations, such as ammunition depots and the Civil-Military Operations Center in the northern city of Kirkuk.
The business was just one part of his ambitions. He considered himself a natural choice to be president of Iraq. He viewed his Sufi order, which includes Sunnis and Shiites, as unifiers — a peaceable alternative to Iranian expansion on one side and al-Qaeda extremism on the other.
But in 2005, Kasnazan was banned from participating in elections by the commission that purged Saddam Hussein’s former party loyalists from government. In the years since, Kasnazan’s political party, the Coalition for Iraqi National Unity, has not established much of a footprint.
A portrait of Sheikh Mohammad al-Kasnazan is displayed at his son’s home in Amman. (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for The Washington Post)
The family’s most notable political achievement happened in 2014, when Kasnazan’s brother, Milas Mohammed Abdulkarim , was chosen to be trade minister. But that quickly ended in scandal.
Iraqi authorities issued arrest warrants for both brothers in October 2015 following an investigation of bribes and illegal benefits. The case involved alleged kickbacks connected to rice purchases for Iraq’s national food ration system.
In November 2018, Milas Abdulkarim was convicted of graft and sentenced to seven years in prison. He is living in Iraqi Kurdistan now, his brother said.
Kasnazan, whose case is still open, according to Iraq’s judiciary, said the allegations against his family were “fabricated” by political enemies.
He now lives in exile in Amman, in a palatial home amid marble, crystal and oil paintings. His furniture is leafed in gold; angel figures perch on the rims of giant vases.
When particularly reverent guests arrive, he lets them bow and kiss him on the feet, according to a video he shared with The Post.
Trump’s arrival in the White House shifted the U.S. government’s view of Iran closer to Kasnazan’s. He was in favor of Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. He supports the approach of Bolton, who advocates for regime change in Iran.
Kasnazan said that he opposes a full U.S. invasion, and that he wants “surgical U.S. military strikes” against Iranian military and intelligence installations.
“You ask why would we want war, but in fact we are not in peace — the violence against Sunnis in Iraq has never stopped,” Kasnazan said in an interview. “Any retreat from Bolton’s policy on Iran will lead to a breaking down of America’s reputation in front of the world.”
He shared with The Post copies of letters he sent to Bolton and Pompeo last summer in which he praised the U.S. government’s hard-line approach toward Iran and offered policy recommendations.
In the letters, Kasnazan wrote that he was “very encouraged by President Donald Trump’s objectives to stop Iranian aggression and expansion in the region.”
A spokesman for Bolton declined to comment. A State Department spokesman said the department was not aware of the letters.
Kasnazan said he supports “surgical” U.S. military strikes against Iran. (Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR for Washington Post)
During Trump’s time in office, Kasnazan said he has met with State Department officials on various occasions, as well as visited think tanks to advocate for his position against Iran.
During his long stay at the Trump hotel in November and December, Kasnazan said, he saw members of Trump’s family at the property, as well as Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Fox News Channel personalities. But he said that he didn’t speak with them and that he never saw Trump.
While in town, Kasnazan attended a retirement party for Dahouk, the State Department adviser.
Dahouk described Kasnazan as an influential figure who has met with officials from the Near Eastern Affairs and policy planning bureaus.
“He had an audience, and many concerned officials valued his perspective,” Dahouk said. “His agenda was to provide an alternate source of atmospherics about what’s going on in Iraq from a person who has many devoted followers on the ground.”
Whether Kasnazan’s networking had any effect on the administration is unknown. But the sheikh said he feels encouraged by the Trump administration’s approach to his home region.
His spokesman said he plans to return to Washington soon — although he hasn’t yet chosen a hotel.First time Pelosi gets a nickname?
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Is it going to be funny when Trump throws his dead father under the bus?
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