Shiite Intelligence
‘THE world is a very complicated place for men who can’t watch TV and chew pretzels at the same time – at least not without losing consciousness at the sheer complexity of the task.
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| ‘Now, polar bears come from which part of Poland?’ |
Iran, Iraq…neighbours separated by a single consonant. North Korea, South Korea…neighbours separated by three consonants (D, M and Z). Ireland and Iceland, Zambia and Gambia, Holland and The Netherlands…
And don’t even get us started on all the ‘stans’.
How’s a little Texan boy with only the most tenuous of grasps on his own language to work out which one he’s supposed to be bombing today?
So let’s not be too surprised by reports in this morning’s Guardian that Iran duped the CIA and White House into invading Iraq.
The paper says an urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into claims that Tehran used the hawks in the Pentagon and White House to topple a hostile neighbour and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.
Apparently, the CIA has hard evidence that Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a former Pentagon favourite, and his intelligence chief Karim Habib passed US secrets to Iran.
Iran also used Chalabi and the INC to pass bogus intelligence back to the US to encourage the administration to invade.
‘It’s pretty clear,’ said one intelligence source, ‘that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner.’ And without choking once.
And Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the US State Department, said Iran had run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history.
‘It persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy,’ he said.
If the US people want to dispose of their greatest enemy, the solution is somewhat simpler – they need only punch a hole through the correct piece of paper in November.
Such is the staggering incompetence of this US administration that even a conservative paper like the Telegraph is counting the days until Bush retires to his ranch permanently.
Writing in the paper, historian Niall Ferguson puts forward a persuasive argument that America is suffering from Asperger’s syndrome.
Asperger’s sufferers, we are told, ‘cannot deal effectively with the social world in which we are all, perforce, obliged to live…
‘They do not understand how or why people tick, and invariably offend or alienate friends or acquaintances with their uninhibited and direct ways of interacting.
‘In other words, they do not understand the subtleties of normal social interaction – that intuitive appreciation we have of knowing just how far to push things.
‘People with Asperger’s trample unwittingly on others’ social sensibilities without embarrassment.’
And nor can they watch TV and chew pretzels at the same time…’
Posted: 25th, May 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
