Republican Chutzpah on Iran-by-Larry C Johnson

[kpete]

Republican Chutzpah on Iran
by
Larry C Johnson

Chutzpah is a Yiddish term that means "unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity". Got to love Yiddish. No other term captures what the Republican staff members of the House Intelligence Committee accomplished today with the release of a partisan report on Iran. http://intelligence.house.gov/Media/PDFS/IranReport082206v2.pdf


When Valerie's identity was exposed by Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others in Bush Administration in the summer of 2003 while she was doing undercover work to monitor, detect, and interdict nuclear technology going to Iran. Larisa Alexandrovna broke the story on Raw Story in February 2006. David Shuster confirmed the report on Hardball on 2 May 2006:

While the heart of the CIA leak investigation is the Bush administration`s aggressive defense of the WMD case for war in Iraq, there is new evidence now the defense may have undermined intelligence efforts on Iran.The key player in the CIA leak story is Valerie Wilson, a CIA operative whose identity was outed by White House officials. As MSNBC first reporter yesterday, Wilson was not just undercover but, according to intelligence sources, was part of an effort three years ago to monitor the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran.

So, the Republicans want to whine about inadequate intelligence on Iran's nuclear program while holding fund raisers for Scooter Libby, one of the men implicated in the leak of Valerie's classified identity? Excuse me? The leak did more than ruin Val's ability to continue working as an undercover CIA officer. The leak destroyed a U.S. intelligence program to collect information about Iran's efforts to get nuclear weapons material.

more at:
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/republican_chut.html

[enough]

1. Thank you Larry Johnson. Such an important article. And thank you kpete.

another snip from the article>

What is particularly galling about this is how Peter Hoekstra has played politics with intelligence all along. In a letter to the White House earlier this year complaining about the possible appointment of Stephen Kappes as the Deputy Director of the CIA, Hoekstra said:

I am convinced that this politicization was underway well before Porter Goss became the Director. In fact, I have long been convinced that a strong and well-positioned group within the Agency intentionally undermined the Administration and its policies. This argument is supported by the Ambassador Wilson/Valerie Plame events, as well as by the string of unauthorized disclosures from an organization that prides itself with being able to keep secrets.

-- Unquote from Hoekstra.

Instead of mounting an investigation to determine who exposed Mrs. Wilson and the intelligence operation she worked on, Hoekstra attacks CIA officers for being political hacks. Mr. Hoekstra, people who live in glass houses shouldn't chuck stones.

We now see a new effort by the Republicans to bully the intelligence community into identifying an imminent threat that does not exist. Iran has been a threat for 26 years. As reported in the Washington Post and New York Times, the intelligence community does not believe Iran is anywhere near to developing or deploying a nuclear weapon.

snip>

[yodermon]

2. This was fully, fully intentional.

Cheney & the neocons outed Val Plame (and thus her anti-nuke-proliferation network) in order for Iran to more easily acquire nuke materials, thus justifying an attack upon them by the US. Full stop.

[DemReadingDU]

3. K&R

Larry Johnson has an excellent blog!

[Annces]

4. kick