Above the Fray

Well, Isikoff's got some stones, I've got to give him credit for that much. In a new, astounding Newsweek article redolent with echoes of the Bush Administration using exiles like Ahmad Chalabi to cook the books relative to intelligence about Iraq, he shows that they're doing it again -- only this time the right hand and the somewhat-less-insane-right hand don't know what the other is doing:

A controversial exile movement cited by President George W. Bush as a source of information on Iran's nuclear ambitions is condemned for psychologically and physically abusing its own members in a new report by the Human Rights Watch.

In a document scheduled for public release this week, Human Rights Watch alleges that the Iranian exile group known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) has a history of cult-like practices that include forcing members to divorce their spouses and to engage in extended self-criticism sessions.

More dramatically, the report states, former MEK members told Human Rights Watch that when they protested MEK policies or tried to leave the organization, they were arrested, in some cases violently abused and in other instances imprisoned. Two former recruits told the human-rights group that they were held in solitary confinement for years in a camp operated by MEK in Iraq under the protection of Saddam Hussein. MEK representatives in the United States and France, where MEK is headquartered, did not immediately respond to Newsweek phone calls and an e-mail requesting comment.

MEK has long been controversial because of its history of violent attacks in Iran, its relationship with Saddam's regime and its background as a quasi-religious, quasi-Marxist radical resistance group founded in the era of the late Iranian Shah. In 1997, the Clinton Administration put MEK on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups. MEK's U.S. supporters, among whom at one point numbered dozens of members of Congress, charged that the Clinton administration only labeled MEK as a terrorist group as part of an ill-conceived attempt to improve relations with the ayatollahs who currently run Iran. However, the Bush administration added two alleged MEK front organizations to the State Department's terrorist list in 2003.

Despite the group's notoriety, Bush himself cited purported intelligence gathered by MEK as evidence of the Iranian regime's rapidly accelerating nuclear ambitions. At a March 16 press conference, Bush said Iran's hidden nuclear program had been discovered not because of international inspections but "because a dissident group pointed it out to the world." White House aides acknowledged later that the dissident group cited by the president is the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), one of the MEK front groups added to the State Department list two years ago.

In an appearance before a House International Relations subcommittee a year ago, John Bolton, the controversial State Department undersecretary who Bush has nominated to become US ambassador to the United Nations, was questioned by a Congressman sympathetic to MEK about whether it was appropriate for the U.S. government to pay attention to allegations about Iran supplied by the group. Bolton said he believed that MEK "qualifies as a terrorist organization according to our criteria." But he added that he did not think the official label had "prohibited us from getting information from them. And I certainly don't have any inhibition about getting information about what's going on in Iran from whatever source we can find that we deem reliable."

I'll wait while you pick up your jaw from the floor, or rearrange the pieces of your head after the explosion, or whatever metaphorical expression of disbelief you like.

Are you ready?

OK.

You've gotta love the way John Bolton is sourced for this story. But it's the content that's so disturbing. I mean, here is the Bush White House, talking "war on terror war on terror war on terror war on terror war on terror war on terror war on terror war on terror war on terror war on terror" for four years now, but if a terrorist group can provide information, even if it's utter horseshit, that is in tune with what the Administration wants to do, then they're A-OK. And this is what people who support this war think is OK? What the heck is wrong with these people?

Scott Ritter said a few months ago that the invasion of Iran was on the table for June. I thought he was probably right then, and I grow more convinced every day.