Thursday, June 21, 2007

More Strange Silence   [Michael Ledeen]

General Petraeus gave an interview to the London Times in which he said

The Iranian involvement here we have found to be much, much more significant than we thought before. They have since about the summer of 2004 played a very, very important role in training in Iran, funding, arming.

I think this is now on the verge of becoming the conventional wisdom, after years of denial from top Bush-administration officials, including, sad to say, Petraeus's predecessors. There has long been a desperate attempt to deny Iran's role in Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter), primarily because it was clear to the military that the policy makers back home didn't want to take the decisive action that the information so clearly demanded. And demands.

Secretary of State Rice seems to have been extremely tenacious in insisting that we must stick to a diplomatic track with the mullahs, even going so far as to recommend the release of the "Irbil 5," the Revolutionary Guards officers captured in Irbil. I suspect—no inside information mind you—that at least some of what Petraeus has learned came from those Iranian killers, and he has bluntly said that he intends to keep them as long as they can talk, as long as we have food for them.

It's quite amazing how the desire NOT to know trumps intelligence every time. Can't let the facts get in the way of good policy, right? The desire NOT to know about Iran is not at all unique to this administration or to this secretary of state. Indeed, it is the basic theme of American policy ever since the 1979 Revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Tehran.

06/21 10:51 PMShare