Author: Jonathan Schwarz

I’ve been looking through The Italian Letter by Peter Eiser and Knut Royce. There’s some amazing stuff in it about Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). WINPAC led the CIA’s analysis of Iraq’s purported WMD, and so Foley is at the very center of what happened.

But what’s even more amazing is how little attention the material about Foley has gotten. The book came out several months ago, but according to Google, this is the first time the below sections have appeared online.

Here’s what Foley believed before the war (p. 125):

There were strong indications that Foley all along was toeing a line he did not believe. Several days after Bush’s State of the Union speech, Foley briefed student officers at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, DC. After the briefing, Melvin Goodman, who had retired from the CIA and was then on the university’s faculty, brought Foley into the secure communications area of the Fort McNair compound. Goodman thanked Foley for addressing the students and asked him what weapons of mass destruction he believed would be found after the invasion. “Not much, if anything,” Goodman recalled that Foley responded. Foley declined to be interviewed for this book.

So why, then, would WINPAC report that Iraq had WMD? Here’s the answer (p. 119):

One day in December 2002, Foley called his senior production managers to his office. He had a clear message for the men and women who controlled the output of the center’s analysts: “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so.” The directive was not quite an order to cook the books, but it was a strong suggestion that cherry-picking and slanting not only would be tolerated, but might even be rewarded.

Interestingly, this event has appeared in other books, although not with Foley’s name attached. Details are here.

Any serious congressional strategy to end this war would include nationally televised hearings about this and all the other lies that got us into Iraq. The seriousness of the Democrats can be judged by such hearings’ non-existence.

Steve Clemons sez:

There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.

On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney’s team and acolytes — who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy…

The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf — which just became significantly larger — as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

The rest.

ABC:

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

Fantastic.

AND: Don’t read the comments on the ABC website if you tend to get depressed about the human condition.

Chalmers Johnson: “Evil Empire: Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?”

Tom Engelhardt: “Close Your Eyes: The Graduation Speech I’ll Never Give”

Frida Berrigan: “We’re # 1!: A Nation of Firsts Arms the World”

Robert Lipsyte: “How We Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Bomb: Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds, and the Bad Boys of Summer”

You’ve probably already seen the Salt Lake City Tribune article about the alleged MySpace page of Laura Schlessinger’s son Deryk, a paratrooper in Afghanistan:

The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned “My Sweet Little Habib”; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.

I only find that mildly interesting. But what I find extremely compelling is the Army’s suggestion that this actually is the creation of Osama bin Laden:

Army spokesman Robert Tallman [said] “it may be possible that our enemies are actually behind this.

“Our enemies are adaptive, technologically sophisticated, and truly understand the importance of the information battlespace,” Tallman continued. “Sadly, they will use that space to promulgate and disseminate untrue propaganda.”

I think I speak for everyone when I say that, if Al Qaeda’s propaganda arm has the time and sophistication to create a fake-but-believable MySpace page for Laura Schlessinger’s son, we’re going to lose this thing. I suggest that we surrender immediately, and I for one welcome our new salafist overlords.