Getting your operatives killed
The US has done a number of dumb-assed things regarding Iran, but look at this little blurb from today's David Ignatius column.
I mean, who could have known Iran might have sympathetic eyes in Iraq? It's not like the military has been screaming about it for months.
(PS. If you were thinking about working with the Americans, do you think you are now? Iranian dissident prison.)
Later: Thinking overnight, I think it's important to note the "turf war" aspect of this. This operation was being run by the "US military officers inside Iraq," not CIA or whoever, so this may have been leaked as part of a broader "turf war."
He said the Iranians had recently captured several dissident Iranian operatives who had been recruited by U.S. military officers inside Iraq and then sent into Iran. The Iranians, whose intelligence network inside Iraq is pervasive, surveilled the meeting, then followed the agents across the border and seized them.
I mean, who could have known Iran might have sympathetic eyes in Iraq? It's not like the military has been screaming about it for months.
(PS. If you were thinking about working with the Americans, do you think you are now? Iranian dissident prison.)
Later: Thinking overnight, I think it's important to note the "turf war" aspect of this. This operation was being run by the "US military officers inside Iraq," not CIA or whoever, so this may have been leaked as part of a broader "turf war."
posted by mikevotes at
10:20 PM
5 Comments:
If you were thinking about working with the Americans, do you think you are now?
Good point. It really makes me wonder about the "recruitment effort". Either we're paying a ridiculous amount of money, making promises we can't keep, or threatening these people with worse than Iran has to offer (which is pretty bad).
But it's the hypocrisy that really strikes me here. This is exactly what we have been accusing the Iranians of doing for years now: meddling in the internal politics of their neighbour. Yet when we "meddle" (i.e. attempt to overthrow their government) it's somehow justified. It's okay because we're the "good guys", but the good guys are kind of required to take the moral high ground, hence the term "good". Instead we have a perverted standard that says the good guys can do whatever they want because they are "good" and the other guys are "bad". And the good guys are good because we say they are good, so keep your mouth shut.
The rest of the world has noticed this weird little exercise in semantics.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 12:05 AM
Also add in that this is the US military running this, not the usual secret services like the CIA.
So, we have the turf war element, why is the US military running this sort of op, and we have a question of knowledge/expertise of the US military running this sort of op.
Also, I'd be curious if Ignatius' "intelligence source" had some feeling about the US military being behind it. IS that why this embarrassment leaked?
I'm gonna add that to the post.
By
mikevotes, at 6:55 AM
Well, the CIA is doing the same thing, so the question comes down to the purpose of the leak.
Perhaps the intelligence agencies want to keep the military out of this kind of effort, so they leaked it.
Is that where you are going with this? It's certainly reasonable.
I'm sceptical, based on the intelligence community's history in this region, that their proxies are any less vulnerable. We just don't hear about those unfortunate failures.
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Todd Dugdale , at 3:17 PM
That'd be my bet. There's been CIA/Military spec op turf wars going on since Tenet/Rumsfeld. The CIA was pissed they were cut out of the horn of Africa, blame the early debacle in Afghanistan on the military, and alot more.
My point was that this was leaked because it sounds so goddamned stupid and it is clearly pointing to the US military folks.
There's a larger battle over the influence on Iran policy, and these types of things are the base on which such influence is exercised.
The CIA wants to run Iran, but Cheney and others want it to be in the military where they have more influence.
So, this is a leak back to make the military look bumbling.
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mikevotes, at 3:57 PM
One possible reason the military is being used in these operations is put forward by Hersh:
"Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference."
Apparently the CIA is restricted in the activities it can undertake by the Finding - mostly intelligence-gathering. The military is under no such restriction. My impression from Hersh is that the CIA is getting nervous about how far the military operations are going, which may be the reason for the leak.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 12:34 AM
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