Now the U.S. is claiming that Chalabi told Iranian officials that we had cracked one of their intelligence codes. U.S. officials asked some news
organizations not to report the information about 10 days ago because it appeared the Iranians were continuing to use the codes anyway. Now we're
moving on to a full-on CIA investigation.
CIA to Investigate Chalabi, U.S.
Officials Say
"The revelations about Chalabi emerged a day after Bush distanced himself from the one-time top U.S. ally.
In the Rose Garden to praise newly announced Iraqi leaders, Bush said he had had little personal contact with Chalabi and that decisions on whether to
include him or not in the new Iraqi interim government were made by the U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi."
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
My take on this...I think we're using this scenario to our benefit on many levels.
First, the administration can distance itself from Chalabi who provided a significant source of intelligence leading up to the recent war and urged
U.S. officials to invade. (Not our fault for going to Iraq on faulty intelligence, Chalabi told us everything was true!)
Second, the administration can use the influence of the U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and his choice to include Chalabi in the interim government to
contend that the U.N. doesn't know what it's doing. (Don't look at us, the U.N. made us put the guy into the new government!)
Third, the administration can use the 'loss of actionable intelligence' which would most certainly result from the Iranian spys abandoning their
coded communications channel which we had hacked. (How could we have POSSIBLY known Iran was building nuclear weapons, we lost our ability to monitor
their communications when Chalabi told them we had cracked their code?!?)
After the whole 9/11 commission, it is important for this administration to demonstrate that even with Homeland Security and the re-organization of
the U.S. intelligence infrastructure, attacks could happen that they could not possibly prevent. This gives them a big 'not my fault' trump card to
play when the inevitable terror attacks occur this summer.
Who knows, maybe they have info about an Iranian attack and this allows them to say they didn't and to discredit Chalabi at the same time...
What do you think?
[Edited on 3-6-2004 by Zion Mainframe]