The Niger Forgeries, Iraq, Black Propaganda, Ledeen & Iran

Vanity Fair's Craig Unger has written a comprehensive piece titled 'The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed' detailing the history of the Niger (yellowcake) forgeries and how the case for the war in Iraq was manipulated. Unger's article serves as a useful primer for those interested in the roots of the outing of Valerie Plame and why her husband, Joe Wilson, was a target of the Bush administration when he proved the Niger documents were forgeries.

Last fall, when I was writing for Booman Tribune, I summarized two bombshell articles by the Italian newspaper la Repubblica (which Unger refers to) that tied Italy's secret service, SISMI, to the Niger affair. (My pieces, with links to the la Repubblica stories, are here and here.) Unger's summary puts all of the pieces together.

I'll leave it to you to read Unger's artcile to determine neocon Michael Ledeen's role, which he denies, in all of this. I found the final paragraphs of Unger's article quite telling and relevant regarding the current push for Iranian compliance with US demands:

But the most important consequence of the Iraq war is its destabilization of the Middle East. If neoconservatives such as Ledeen and their critics agree on anything, it is that so far there has been only one real winner in the Iraq conflict: the fundamentalist mullahs in Iran. For decades, the two big threats in the Middle East—Iran and Iraq—had counterbalanced each other in a standoff that neutralized both. Yet the Bush administration, despite having declared Iran a member of the Axis of Evil, proceeded to attack its two biggest enemies, Afghanistan and Iraq. "Iran is unquestionably the biggest beneficiary of the war in Iraq," says Milt Bearden.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the Bush administration is now rattling its sabers against Iran, which has been flexing its muscles with a new nuclear program. As a result, according to a Zogby poll in May, 66 percent of Americans now see Iran as a threat to the U.S. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national-security adviser to President Carter, has argued that starting the Iraq war was a catastrophic strategic blunder, and that taking military action against Iran may be an even bigger mistake. "I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world," he told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. "Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world."

To Michael Ledeen, however, Iran's ascendancy is just one more reason to expand the Iraq war to the "terror masters" of the Middle East. "I keep saying it over and over again to the point where I myself am bored," he says. "I have been screaming 'Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran' for five years. [Those in the Bush administration] don't have an Iran policy. Still don't have one. They haven't done fuck-all."

We may never know what's gone on behind closed doors in Washington, but Unger's article offers some interesting insights and is well worth reading.