The Prospect's Matthew Yglesias brings to my attention this Wall Street Journal editorial today. In it, the Journal staff reveal that they were leaked a classified Pentagon report, which -- surprise surprise -- declared that Chalabi's INC "proved to be head and shoulders above the information provided by" other Iraqi political organizations with which it was cooperating.

Don't you wonder if this report itself was leaked to the WSJ, not by the Pentagon, but by the INC to its friends with access to the WSJ editorial board? Laurie Mylroie, or the woman who spends night and day writing about the UN oil for food scandal? [and who's taken up Mylroie's other obsession that Iraq might have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing?] I wish I could remember her name, Victoria or Valerie, her initials are VB, I think.

Isn't this part of the problem with Chalabi's neocon supporters? Much like the Feith memo ending up in the Weekly Standard's hand? That showed that Feith and his staff thought that raw intelligence scraps were the same thing as a professional intelligence analysis?

Secondly, remember how neocons like David Brooks wailed on about how everyone was accusing the neocons of being "a cabal," of conducting secretive conspiratorial foreign policy etc.?

"The Chalabi Fiasco: The Iraqi politician is a pawn in a much larger strategic game," the editorial is breathlessly entitled.

Who's crying conspiracy theory now?

Posted by Laura at May 26, 2004 07:01 PM