Juan Cole / Informed Comment: 04/12/05 Part 1

Competent Intelligence Urged by Rumsfeld

Ironies of Iraq today:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is afraid that the new Shiite religious government in Iraq will purge ex-Baathists placed in the army and intelligence services by US ally Iyad Allawi, a long-term CIA asset. Rumsfeld said that competent persons should be retained. This is the same Rumsfeld whose own deputy, Douglas Feith, set up a grossly incompetent cell in the Pentagon to cherry-pick intelligence and produce a false image of Iraq as bristling with weapons of mass destruction and in league with al-Qaeda.