Which is the most embarrassing element of the Chalabi situation?

[Champion Jack]

Okay, now take Mark A. R. Kleiman's Chalabi quiz:




1. That we've been paying Chalabi to tell us lies.


2. That Chalabi duped us by spreading the same false intelligence he was
peddling to us to foreign intelligence agencies, whose reports when
appeared as "confirmation" of his original fabrications.


3. That the original source of the fabrications may turn out to have been
the Iranian intelligence service, using Chalabi to induce the U.S. to
invade Iraq.


4. That, in return for the disinformation the Iranians were feeding us
through him, Chalabi was passing genuine American secrets to Iranian
intelligence.


5. That no one in Washington seems to have been authorized to give
Chalabi or his crew that sensitive information, raising the specter of
possible Espionage Act prosecutions.


6. That Chalabi managed to get himself seated right behind the First Lady
for the State of the Union in January.


7. That a number of prominent American neocons have decided to support
Chalabi against their own government, using in some cases strikingly
anti-American language.


8. That the raid enraged Chalabi against the United States without
reducing his ability to damage us.


9. That, after U.S. and CPA officials attributed the raid on Chalabi's
house and party headquarters to Iraqis, the Iraqi Interim Governing
Council denounced it.


10. That, despite the presence of 100 U.S. soldiers at the raid, the
Secretary of Defense denied any advance knowledge of it.


And the answer:


The correct answer is #10:


The most embarassing element of the Chalabi raid is that Secretary
Rumsfeld denied any advance knowledge of it, apparently truthfully. As
Thomas and Hosenball tell the story in Newsweek, the rage in the uniformed
ranks against the DoD top civilian leadership is so profound that the
commanders on the ground in Baghdad didn't bother to buck the decision up
the line before going along with Paul Bremer's decision to conduct the
raid.
If you didn't pick the correct answer, consider finding a handbook of
military science and looking in the index under "Command, chain of." If
the possibility that the uniformed folks have decided to disregard the
wishes of the SecDef doesn't send chills down your spine, then try a
political science textbook under "Military, civilian control of."
There's only one saving possibility I can think of: perhaps Rumsfeld had
signed off on the decision to crack down on Chalabi, but gave orders
ensuring that he wouldn't literally know in advance about the details of
the raid to preserve his own deniability in case the thing went wrong and
needed to be blamed on Bremer (a lame duck in any case).
But leaving everyone vague about who the soldiers in Iraq report to seems
like a very high price to pay for a little bit of political wiggle room.


http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

[FleshCartoon]

1. # 5...

...might not be the most embarrassing, but it's certainly the most disturbing to me. Especially in light of having learned that Bandar of Saudi Arabia knew we were going to war with Iraq before the Sec. of State did.