Rogue's Gallery

Ron Suskind's revelation of document forgery to cover up the case for war with Iraq caused quite a stir yesterday. Today he writes in the Huffington Post about the whole sordid tale - it's quite unbelievable.

The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying a $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.

In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization."

The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists like Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of the CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting the CIA from conducting disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.

This is all well-sourced in the book, Suskind claims, and nobody has impeached his credibility to this point in his other best-sellers. So the benefit of the doubt is definitely on his side.

And then what you have a picture of is your government, to which you pay tax dollars, forging evidence for a nonexistent al Qaeda-Iraq link, using wanted criminals as intelligence assets, paying them off to the tune of $5 million dollars in hush money, and laundering propaganda through dicey media sources. This is a government out of control, with nothing but contempt for the rule of law and American values.

Somehow, this Administration isn't involved in the 2008 Presidential race. Despite this track record. That's a big mistake.