Iran-Contra II?
Sat Aug 28, 2004 at 11:06:27 PM PDT
Note: Lots to cross reference here; I don't even know if I can keep up with it.
As Atrios
puts it: I'm starting to think that every dozen years ago the same bunch
of corrupt idiots, or their intellectual progeny, get into power and proceed
to screw things up until they get caught, at which point the "establishment,"
with which they're intimately intertwined, demands leniency, letting them go
lurk underground until they're ready to pop up and screw things up all
over again.
It's to the point where the old incompetency defense just doesn't cut it anymore.
Somehow, these warlocks from the American Enterprise Institute and the Project
for the New American Century keep getting put on our payroll. And we
keep paying them to do their best to instigate global clusterfucks
wherever they can. It's the same goddamned cast of characters over and over
again (you
can see them here—scroll down to the bottom for the rogues' gallery
of signatories). They seem to just take turns being the fall guy, since no one
ever seems to pay a real price for any of these, er, High Crimes Against The
State. Why do we put up with this? (The Wikipedia has a nice rundown of this Special Episode in our recent history.)
Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris have
posted a piece in the Washington Monthly that they have been working
on for some time that synchs up nicely about the FBI investigation into the
mole at the DoD who's been passing secrets to the Israelis. It's brief, and
should probably be quite a bit longer (maybe more to come?), but they at least
are getting a start on putting some of these pieces together. As usual with
all things foreign-policy and especially foreign-intrigue, Laura
Rozen's WarAndPiece.com has a good rundown of the story. She actually should
probably give you the rest. But here are some <strike>plagiarized</strike> tidbits,
some of which I am sure you have cought wind already:
- Pentagon officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin had been running a back-channel
operation to share intel with Iranian "exiles" for over two years,
against the expressed orders of superiors at CIA and DoD.
- Some of these meetings were coordinated and/or attended by the Italian military
intelligence organization SISMI. SISMI has been in the news recently for having
been reported to have used an Italian middle man to the put the forged Niger
docs into circulation.
- Franklin & Rhode both work in the office of Douglas Feith, who has been
one of our old buddy (Iraqi exile) Ahmed
Chalabi's main champions at the Pentagon.
- The main Iranian exile at these meetings is, wouldn't you know it, that
old
scoundrel and arms dealer, Manucher
Gorbanifar. (Shouldn't Adnan
Khashoggi be joining the party any minute?)
So... what, are we talking about lining up symmetrical operations, hinged upon
Middle East exiles that career intelligence professionals won't touch
with a ten-foot pole?
And this is all beside the fact that they may have been shunting intel off
to Israel. I'm so glad the grown-ups are in charge, aren't you?
Yeah. Me too.
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