"S" Doesn't Stand for "Superman"

The Decline and Fall of the Rovian Empire continues apace with this article from the Washington Post:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Overseas, things aren't a whole lot better--Juan Cole notes an article he just wrote for Salon titled The Iraq War is Over and the Winner is...Iran. Excerpt:

'the Bush administration cannot have been filled with joy when Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and eight high-powered cabinet ministers paid an extremely friendly visit to Tehran this week. The two governments went into a tizzy of wheeling and dealing of a sort not seen since Texas oil millionaires found out about Saudi Arabia. Oil pipelines, port access, pilgrimage, trade, security, military assistance, were all on the table in Tehran. All the sorts of contracts and deals that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had imagined for Halliburton, and that the Pentagon neoconservatives had hoped for Israel, were heading instead due east. Jaafari's visit was a blow to the Bush administration's strategic vision, but a sweet triumph for political Shiism.'

Ouch. Not exactly the neo-con agenda there, although maybe Dubya can work with it...


And Patrick Cockburn has the latest from inside Iraq--just when you think it can't possibly get any worse...

A current slogan of the powers-that-be in Washington and London is that we should "stay the course in Iraq". Perhaps one needs to live in Baghdad to know that there is no course. "The Americans are making it up from day to day," a senior Iraqi official told me. "They make a mistake and then try to correct it by making a bigger mistake."

The only real continuity in US policy in Iraq over the past two years has been the need to present what is happening here as a success to the American voter. After the invasion in 2003 there was an attempt at full occupation under the Coalition Provisional Authority. This imperial takeover provoked armed resistance by the five million Sunni Arabs. At this time the US did not want elections as demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shia religious leader. It was only when it became clear that the US could not withstand a Shia uprising that elections turned out to have been an immediate American goal all along.

Zigzags in policy have been interspersed with spurious "turning points" . In December 2003 there was the capture of Saddam Hussein. The guerrilla war continued to escalate. Six months later there was the much-trumpeted handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government. This had equally little effect. This January, there was the election, sold as the moment the tide would turn. Half a year later, Baghdad has turned into a slaughterhouse...

The London bombings are already making it more difficult to have a sane discussion about what course to pursue in Iraq. President Bush is able to deflect criticism of his catastrophic misjudgements by suggesting his critics are soft on terrorism. Now the same thing is happening in Britain with Tony Blair and Jack Straw denouncing Chatham House for suggesting that events in Iraq boosted terrorism.

It obviously has. Immediately around my hotel, eight suicide bombers, probably non-Iraqis, have blown themselves up in the past 18 months. It always seemed to me horribly likely that some, at least, of these pious and fanatical young Muslims radicalised by events in Iraq would, instead of perpetrating atrocities here, turn their attention to Britain.

New World Order? More like New World Chaos. Thanks Dubya. Thanks Dick. Thanks Karl.