Bush's legacy as a dupe of the Iranians

Last week, I had an argument in Los Angeles with an Israeli woman who told me that she thought George "Dubya" Bush was the greatest president in the last 50 years because his policies will lead to a "liberated" Middle East.

I disagreed and said that his invasion of Iraq messed up the Middle East, and that if the Middle East does get more enlightened 20 years from now, it will have to do with other events, not the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003. More important, I told her that one can make the argument that Bush and the Cheney-Bush administration were agents of influence for Iran. She gasped as I explained that, when we think about it, the US had the opportunity to stay in Afghanistan and the borders of Pakistan to complete the job of bringing bin Laden to justice (or killing him in a direct attack if we found and fought his forces directly), and to use our then world sympathy to diplomatically slow down the Iranian movement to develop a nuclear bomb.

Instead, using the largely false information coming from the accused Iranian double agent, Chalabi, and others, such as Curveball, the Cheney-Bush administration ignored the Iranian bomb threat and overthrew the one leader whom the Iranians feared: Saddam Hussein. Also, I said that if there was anyone who wanted to defeat bin Laden in the Middle East, it was Saddam Hussein. Just as short term needs required the US to side with Stalin against Hitler, a smarter policy for America and the world would have been to stay the course against bin Laden and worked with the rest of the world, including Saddam Hussein to go after Al Queda and, simultaneously, work to quell Iranian nuclear ambitions.

She was predictably speechless, but the person who was standing next to me said, "Wow, that is great. I never quite saw that before. Bush IS an Iranian agent."

So now, via Atrios, I see this report from the McClatchy news service today entitled "Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?" Yup, they did. And this article helps even the most hardened FoxNews watcher to start wondering the same thing--if FoxNews covered the story...

And of course, this also means that John McCain is an Iranian dupe, too--in addition to his rank ignorance about Al Queda, Iraqi Sunnis and Iranian and Iraqi Shias. As Bill Maher recently said, "John McCain is not tougher about the war, he's dumber about the war." Yup again. Dumber.