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Editor’s Note: Four years ago – on Nov. 2, 2003 – a U.S. helicopter was shot down over Iraq, killing 16 U.S. troops, an early “Vietnam moment” in what was emerging as a powerful Iraqi insurgency.
The incident helped convince a newly organized group of former U.S. intelligence officers, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, that the war was unwinnable. Below is the prescient analysis written by VIPS co-founder Ray McGovern on Nov. 3, 2003:
During the scandal known as “Plame-gate,” it became an article of faith in many Washington power centers that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson wasn’t “covert” and thus there was no “underlying crime” when the Bush administration intentionally blew her cover.
This view was pushed not only by right-wing acolytes of George W. Bush but by leading media outlets, such as the Washington Post editorial page, which championed an argument from Republican lawyer Victoria Toensing that the CIA-headquarters-based Plame wasn’t covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is at her mushroom-cloud hyperbolic best, and this time Iran is the target.
Her claim last week that “the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world” is simply too much of a stretch.
