Wednesday, June 02, 2004
The Sinking Ship
Now that the sea has changed regarding the erstwhile sweetheart of the neo-conservatives, Ahmad Chalabi, more disturbing details of this troubled relationship wash ashore each day. The latest piece of disturbing flotsam is the revelation that Chalabi was passing on extremely sensitive classified information to one of the countries that President Bush located on the "axis of evil," namely Iran.
As reported in the New York Times today, "Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service, betraying one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials."
As reported on CNN today, "The code was invaluable to Washington for intercepting intelligence from Iran's sophisticated secret service and could have provided information about Iranian operations inside Iraq and around the world."
So, in essence, this disclosure, by our supposed ally who has received over $4 million from the Bush administration over the past year alone, has greatly compromised our intelligence gathering efforts, and potentially the greater war on terror, especially in light of the fact that all indications point to Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. According to an article appearing on CNN.com today, an IAEA report indicates that Iran has been continuing to clandestinely amass materials necessary for producing enriched weapons grade uranium, as well as manufacturing components for the same purpose. Of course, now monitoring these increasingly dangerous developments, involving actual WMDs, will be much more difficult as Iran will encode their intelligence communications with a different encryption.
This complete and utter lack of judgment is illustrative of the type of policymaking and leadership that have so mismanaged and bungled the invasion of Iraq and post-war reconstruction. Friends like Chalabi are worse than enemies, and policies that were supposed to make us safer have instead exposed us to increasingly more danger.
As reported in the New York Times today, "Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service, betraying one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials."
As reported on CNN today, "The code was invaluable to Washington for intercepting intelligence from Iran's sophisticated secret service and could have provided information about Iranian operations inside Iraq and around the world."
So, in essence, this disclosure, by our supposed ally who has received over $4 million from the Bush administration over the past year alone, has greatly compromised our intelligence gathering efforts, and potentially the greater war on terror, especially in light of the fact that all indications point to Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. According to an article appearing on CNN.com today, an IAEA report indicates that Iran has been continuing to clandestinely amass materials necessary for producing enriched weapons grade uranium, as well as manufacturing components for the same purpose. Of course, now monitoring these increasingly dangerous developments, involving actual WMDs, will be much more difficult as Iran will encode their intelligence communications with a different encryption.
This complete and utter lack of judgment is illustrative of the type of policymaking and leadership that have so mismanaged and bungled the invasion of Iraq and post-war reconstruction. Friends like Chalabi are worse than enemies, and policies that were supposed to make us safer have instead exposed us to increasingly more danger.
