June 6, 2008, Yesterday's news... today!
Now that Sen. Clinton has, or will have by tomorrow, evidently, acknowledged the reality that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee, we can get back to our regularly scheduled favorite topic... the geniuses who have been running our country for the last seven plus years!
We'll start with this McLatchy report about Senate Intel Committee finding that Pentagon officials were "duped" by Iran-Contra figures (and presumably Iranian governmental operatives) into doing Iran's bidding vis a vis removing both Bush family and Iranian mutual bogey-man Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. When Iranian and Bush family interests align... watch out! As with the Iran-Contra scandal, a key figure was shady arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s. Another is uber-neocon Michael Ledeen.
From the McLatchy report:
Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
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The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.
According to the Senate report, the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity unit concluded in 2003 that Ledeen "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar."
It just goes on from there, with a note that the State Dept. quickly debunked anything that Ledeen touched as a load of garbage, and hence, Rumsfeld's and Cheney's people, eager for any excuse to attack Iraq, ate it up. Among the brilliant plans discussed included bringing down the Iranian regime with massive traffic jams in Teheran. You can't make this up.
The Iranian/Pentagon contacts were first reported by Newsday nearly five years ago, in an article co-written by our friend, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Knut Royce (interviewed here, on the subject of other pre-Iraq war evidence fabrication).
Well, well. The McClatchy report inaccurately uses the term "duped," as if to imply that the Pentagon officials gave a crap as to whether the excuses they were being provided to attack Saddam held up as a matter of fact; we now know that "the facts were fixed around the policy." Hence, any fabricator with the cojones to sell it [on the subject of any "threat" presented by Saddam]... found ready buyers willing to go with it in the Bush Administration, particularly buyers who answered to Feith or Cheney. Rather than "were duped," I would suggest Pentagon officials "played along" with the Iranian operatives. Not necessarily knowing that they were doing Iran's bidding, but in reckless disgregard as to whether they were or not.
And as to the Iranians... well, does it get any better for them, when their second-archest enemy decides to invest a humongous amount of blood and treasure to take out its first archest-enemy? I mean, does it ever get more win/win than that?
The thing is, Ledeen is still out there, and while many of the players are no longer in government, there seems little doubt that one of these days, the next time there is a Republican Administration, particular if someone named "Bush" is involved in it, this Iranian connection will be revivified for the benefit of GOP insiders and Iranian insiders and the detriment of American interests. Note how cooperative Rumsfeld, Feith, Cambone, etc. were in allowing all of this to go on [then again, they needed the intel... any intel... to justify the Excellent Iraq Adventure(TM)]. And Mr. Ledeen, who, if these allegations are accurate, should probably be investigated for treason (as if!) will instead continue to be a "trusted intermediary," friend of the Bush family, and still be spouting dangerous fantasies about taking out the Iranian regime even while he himself is working with its agents against this nation's interests! Again! Deep sighs all around.
Oh my. This has been... yesterday's news... today.