The Parallel Reality of the Neocons: The other day at a book talk at the American Enterprise Institute, listening to author Laurie Mylroie, employing Powerpoint, rail on about her theory that the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef must have been an Iraqi intelligence agent, and that his maternal uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the 9/11 mastermind, must also therefore be an Iraqi intelligence agent, I looked around the room and wondered if everybody else there must be thinking, this is insane, this is witnessing a kind of insanity. I wasn't sure.

Richard Perle sat proudly by, suggesting during his comments that Mylroie should be placed at the head of a CIA unit that would institutionalize the B team exercises of the Cold War. Many of their comments were devoted to their idea that the CIA and State Department have been locked into a certain "filtering model of reality" regarding Iraq, a kind of prevailing worldview, that prevented those agencies from being able to absorb or acknowledge the kind of infomation about Iraq cooperating with Al Qaeda in attacks on the US, that the neo cons believe to have occurred.

Afterwards I went up to Perle, to ask whether he too felt like he was a victim of a "filtering model of reality" whereby he was so utterly convinced that Saddam did have WMD and was cooperating with Al Qaeda, that he and his colleagues were simply unable to process information that we now know suggested neither theory was true. I asked whether he felt misled by Chalabi, since it has now been widely reported that the information from the defectors provided by Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress to the CIA and the DIA has turned out to be useless. Perle said, "That's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong," and insisted that Chalabi had never provided defectors to the US intelligence community at all, contrary to dozens of reports. As for my other questions, he said, "I never said going into Iraq would be a cakewalk," something I never remotely accused him of saying.

Afterwards another reporter who had witnessed the exchange came up to me and said, you can't talk to Richard Perle that way. He suggested I should have moulded my questions to flatter the warped view of reality of Perle and his circle if I wanted to get a more quotable response from them.

I knew that, I told him, since he was trying to be helpful. But I was compelled to try and just ask Perle directly without a lot of verbal gymnastics what I was thinking, because increasingly, railing against his theories in my own work, in media critical of the neocons, etc. makes one feel like the two parallel worlds in which the neo cons and the rest of are living, are well -- unable to communicate with each other. The basic facts and reality we perceive are so entirely different. It is hard to argue about strategy or tactics or goals, when you can't get the neocons to acknowledge the basic facts that have come out of Iraq.

And frankly, I found it kind of disturbing that not a single other person at that event that day dared breach protocol to challenge the outrageousness of Mylroie's and Perle's insistence that it was the CIA and State Departments which got Iraq wrong, when all available evidence makes clear it was Perle and Mylroie who got Iraq wrong. Maybe those who disagree with the neocons have just decided to save themselves the high blood pressure of bothering to go to AEI Iraq events at all. It is only worth going, as so many foreign diplomats and journalists do, because Perle is undeniably reflective of a kind of prevailing worldview of a certain group of people - such as Doug Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, who many of us don't often get the chance to personally listen to.

Well, now the Weekly Standard has published what it claims is definitive proof that Perle, Feith and the other neocons were right about Saddam and Al Qaeda all along. Apparently they have been leaked (imagine that!) a classified top secret memo prepared by Doug Feith for the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, which spells out in 50 points the "proof" that Saddam and Osama Bin Laden had forged a cooperative relationship shortly after the Gulf War, and worked together right through 2003. "Case closed," the Weekly Standard writes. "There can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans":

--"OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD," the magazine reports, more than a bit breathlessly.

--"The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee...Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies."

Etc.

The memo asserts that it has proof to back up lots of other canards of the neocons, for instance, that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta did indeed have two visits to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligent agent, a fact that has been in dispute.

What's one to say except, this memo, these leaked "proofs" of exactly what the neocons insisted was true all along is highly suspicious in every way. The neocons do seem to have this habit of just manufacturing their own reality and their own "facts" when the real facts don't back up the worldview and convictions they have endorsed. Indeed, the Feith memo seems to offer the kind of "vindication" the neocons hoped they would get from Iraq weapons of mass destruction hunter David Kay, but which David Kay -- sadly, for them -- did not yet prove able to provide them.

It truly seems like the Administration is unravelling over the mess of post war Iraq, and that we are witnessing some of that unravelling and desperation with this leaked memo. The B team has become unhinged.

The Washington Post's Walter Pincus offers a sensible critique of some of the claims in the Feith memo, here.

Finally, isn't it humbling at what regular intervals the conservative press is leaked just exactly what the administration wants to be, while this administration makes such an unbelievably hypocritical fuss about intelligence leaks?

Follow Up: Interestingly, the Defense Department is disavowing this leak:

"DoD Statement on News Reports of al-Qaida and Iraq Connections

-"News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.

-"A letter was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 27, 2003 from Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in response to follow-up questions from his July 10 testimony. One of the questions posed by the committee asked the Department to provide the reports from the Intelligence Community to which he referred in his testimony before the Committee. These reports dealt with the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida.

-"The letter to the committee included a classified annex containing a list and
description of the requested reports, so that the Committee could obtain the reports from the relevant members of the Intelligence Community.

-"The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the Intelligence Community. The selection of the documents was made by DOD to respond to the Committee's question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions.

-"Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious
harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal."

Why do we suspect this leak won't ever get punished...

Follow Up II: Perle keeps getting himself in trouble...

Posted by Laura at November 16, 2003 11:23 AM