What puts the Angry in Angry Bear?
The FBI is investigating an intercepted Iranian message that alleges Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi told Tehran officials that the United States had broken Iran’s secret code, U.S. officials said.
The message alleges Chalabi said he had been told about the code-breaking by a drunken U.S. official, one senior Bush administration official said.
The New York Times reported in today’s editions that about six weeks ago, Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.
Basically, it looks like we went to Iraq because Chalabi said so. This story raises an additional important question: who is the heavier drinker, Richard Perle or Doug Feith?
Speaking of angry, this story does the trick as well:
Shortly before the Pentagon awarded a division of oil services contactor Halliburton Co. a sole-source contract to help restore Iraqi oil fields last year, an Army Corps of Engineers official wrote an e-mail saying the award had been “coordinated” with the office of Vice President Cheney, Halliburton’s former chief executive.
The March 5, 2003, e-mail, disclosed over the weekend by Time magazine, noted that Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, had signed off on the deal “contingent on informing WH [the White House] tomorrow.”
“We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP’s office,” it continued.
No word yet on whether Feith was drunk when he signed off on the deal.
AB
UPDATE: Mark Kleiman’s angry too.