War and Piece

Look out your window. Are pink porcine farm animals soaring through the air? Because Bob Dreyfuss has found a point of hearty agreement with the neoconservatives: the time for NATO is past, Bob declares.

Finally there’s something I agree with the neocons about: NATO. That organization is a dinosaur of the Cold War whose extinction is long overdue. Now, the neocons—whose Iraq project ran afoul of old Europe—seem ready to get rid of NATO, too.

I couldn't disagree with both Bob and the neocons more. I think NATO is indispensable, and no where more than in the area of peacekeeping. In fact, I think NATO should be the successor to the mostly failed project of UN peacekeeping. NATO has shown in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan that it is a far more effective peace enforcement institution than anything else out there -- and places like Darfur are crying out for intervention.

If you are subscriber, or you snag a copy on the US Airways shuttle or something, see my article on UN reform that addresses some of these ideas in the current July issue of the American Prospect.

Why is Iran declaring its intentions to continue construction of nuclear centrifuges? Not clear, but the US is pushing the IAEA to formally report Iran's noncompliance to the UN Security Council. Meantime, the Sun story points to this explosive report:

Western intelligence officials believe Iran's Revolutionary Guards tried to cover up a nuclear accident triggered when weapons-grade uranium was being shipped from North Korea.

The accident allegedly caused Tehran's new international airport to be sealed off by Revolutionary Guard commanders within hours of its official opening on May 9.

The first scheduled commercial landing at the airport - an Iran Air civilian flight from Dubai - was intercepted by two Iranian air force jets and diverted to Isfahan, about 300 kilometres away, even though it was low on fuel. At the same time, trucks blocked the runway to prevent other landings...

In December 2002, according to officials with access to the airport, a North Korean cargo jet delivering nuclear technology, including some weapons-grade uranium, was being unloaded at night under military supervision.

A container slipped and cracked on the tarmac, and everyone in the area was taken away for thorough medical examinations.

Crews from the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, wearing protective suits, were brought in to clean up the spillage.

The BBC's Matt Frei pointed out tonight, that what NATO leaders are discussing vis a vis a NATO role in Iraq, is so minor, it is telling: whether NATO should conduct the training of Iraqi forces inside Iraq, or outside Iraq. The pro-US contingent at NATO is pushing for the training to be done inside Iraq. France and Germany are pushing for the training to be done outside Iraq. Either way, NATO's involvement in Iraq is set to remain symbolic at most.

Update: Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay reports Monday from the NATO summit in Istanbul, that the issue was never resolved.

The NATO statement on training indicated that it would be up to individual countries to decide whether to contribute instructors and whether they would teach inside or outside Iraq. NATO ambassadors are to work out details of a training scheme with Allawi's government "on an urgent basis," the statement said.

The lack of specifics reflected persisting differences over how deeply NATO should become involved in Iraq... French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said they would not send instructors to Iraq.

Good news from Serbia: a reformer, Boris Tadic, has won the presidential elections, making him Serbia's first democratically elected president since World War II. Tadic, 46, is a good guy, a true "liberal democrat," from the Democratic Party of assassinated former Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic. A Sarajevo born psychology professor at Belgrade University, Tadic has long been an advocate of sending war crimes suspects to the Hague. I got to know some of his staff from the bad old days when they were risking their lives in the opposition to Milosevic, and they were impressive, serious, young, pro-western, and pro-human rights. This is especially good news because Tadic's victory means the defeat of an ally of the notorious assassinated war crimes suspect and war profiteer, Zeljko Raznatovic, a.k.a. Arkan.

What a classy guy.

US parts found at suspected Iran nuclear site. So reports Reuters.

A radiation monitoring device spotted in Iran at a razed site where Washington suspects Iran conducted covert atomic bomb-related research was itself made in the United States and sold directly to Tehran, sources said.

A Western diplomat and an independent nuclear expert who follow the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters the radiation detection device -- called a "whole body counter" -- was identified as having been made by the Connecticut-based firm Canberra Industries, Inc.

The disclosure could prove embarrassing to Washington which has accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program and has called on countries to crack down on exports of even seemingly innocent machinery that could be used in weapons programs.

Certainly the fact US industry might even unwittingly be involved in furthering the nuclear aspirations of a charter member of the axis of evil might be embarrassing for Washington.

And Matt is right. Iran may very well have emerged the winner of the US campagin in Iraq. Iran and the Iran nuclear issue also seem to be emerging as the predominant preoccupation of US foreign policy. Task forces at the Council of Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council (led by Brent Scowcroft), and elsewhere are currently working on position papers on what US foreign policy to Iran should be.

Yesterday, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, who has been criticized by some in the past for being too pragmatic and pro-(oil) business friendly about Iran, sounded a note of real alarm about Iran's nuclear program in an oped in the Washington Post:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has just rebuked Iran for failing to cooperate fully with international inspectors who are examining whether Tehran is meeting its nonproliferation commitments.

How concerned should we be about this development? What does it mean? By its own admission, Iran has been taking steps to develop the capability to enrich uranium...While Iran says its activities are solely for peaceful production of nuclear power and are permitted by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, once enrichment capability exists, a major barrier to producing a nuclear weapon virtually vanishes. The IAEA condemnation is an indication that the world may be on the verge of a major breakdown of the nonproliferation regime, to say nothing of a huge new source of instability in a critically important region.

We are at a critical moment. Are we serious in our efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation, or will we watch the world descend into a maelstrom where weapons-grade nuclear material is plentiful and unimaginable destructive capability is available to any country or group with a grudge against society?

What does Scowcroft propose?

Our goal instead should be to delegitimize the spread of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing facilities to any country, because these capabilities are the linchpin of any program to develop nuclear weapons.

Hawkish undersecretary of state John Bolton discussed what he called the administration's "counterproliferation" program (he prefers that over the traditional "nonproliferation" he said) and Iran at AEI and on the Hill yesterday. You can read his AEI remarks here [note, link to .pdf file]. But given the report in Reuters yesterday cited above about US company parts being found at a suspected former Iranian nuclear site casts Bolton's remarks in a new light:

On February 11, at the National Defense University, President Bush gave what is arguably one of the most “wonkish” speeches ever delivered by a President. I liked it. He detailed a number of proposals that made clear the Administration’s overarching approach: the frontlines in our nonproliferation strategy must extend beyond the well-known rogue states to the trade routes and entities that are engaged in supplying the countries of greatest proliferation concern.

Trade routes and entities that include Connecticut, I take it?

MORE: As Tim Dunlop reminds us about the old joke about Iraq, we know they have weapons of mass destruction because we have the receipts. They pick us up too.

Re: Hersh's story on Israel and the Kurds. This today from Ha'aretz:

Paper says Turkish FM leaked Mossad, Kurd story

By Zvi Bar'el

ANKARA - Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is the source of the
leak to New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh that dozens of Israeli
Mossad agents are ostensibly in northern Iraq. The reliable Turkish
newspaper Cumhuriyet yesterday stated that Gul, along with two advisers and a spokesman, had a breakfast meeting with Hersh on May 27, on which occasion he gave the information to Hersh.

Official Turkish spokesmen denied the report in Jumhurriyet, dismissing
it as "a report by an opposition paper," but sources at the paper
insisted the report is "correct, verified, and approved by highly informed
sources."

Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani categorically denied Hersh's report on
Wednesday.

Turkish sources yesterday confirmed to Haaretz that despite the
denials, official Turkey still does not completely believe that no Israeli
agents are present in northern Iraq. According to these sources, Israeli
and Turkish officials held talks over the past year regarding the
possibility of cooperation with the Kurds. The Israeli side indeed declared
that any cooperation of this kind would only occur in coordination with
Turkey and not behind its back. However, "Turkish sensitivity to the
possibility that Israel would exploit an opportunity prevents the Turkish
government from relaxing. Perhaps that is why, if it was indeed Gul who
passed on the information, his sole purpose was to nip the idea in the
bud," they said.

In any event, Israel has made it clear to Turkey that Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon decided not to open a channel of cooperation with the Kurds.
For now, that decision is blocking proposals submitted by Israeli
intelligence officials to Sharon to try to reestablish the connection with
the Kurds.

Many interesting threads to pull from this. Turkey of course has long been anxious about Kurdish separatism; the fear that it would lead to greater autonomy for Iraq's Kurds and subsequently demands for autonomy by Turkey's Kurds was Ankara's principle hang up about a US-led intervention in Iraq. But for nearly a decade, Turkish-Israeli military to military relations have been very strong. So, what does the allegation that the Hersh story was sourced by the Turkish foreign minister indicate about how Ankara is viewing Sharon these days? Is there something to the allegations in Hersh's report about Israel covertly aiding Iraqi Kurdish militias, or is it all based in Turkish conspiracy theories and paranoia about US and Israeli intentions and Kurdish separatism? That remains to be seen, but surely the answer is to be found -- or not -- in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.

Let's hope Hersh comes through with a follow up clarifying all of this.

Meantime, what does the information in this Ha'aretz story say about the evolution of relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv? What had cemented strong relations between Turkey and Israel was a few shared strategic enemies, particularly Syria and Iran, as well as a shared principal ally: Washington. Particularly, Washington over Europe. All that has shifted, with improved Turkish-Syrian relations, somewhat improved Turkish-Iranian relations, improved Turkish-European relations, and deteriorating Turkish-US relations...as well as the rise of a (moderate) Islamist government in Ankara, and a more hardline Israeli government under Ariel Sharon. Neocons have long cherished the idea of a Washington-Turkey-Israel alliance, even over Washington's long-time alliances with NATO and certainly over Europe. But according to my Turkish sources, no one has done more to alienate Turkey from the US than the neocons, particularly Paul Wolfowitz who manages to alienate Turks with every public statement since the run up to the war. [According to Turkish sources, Wolfowitz had said something along the lines of, if what was keeping Turkey from joining the US-led alliance invading Iraq was Turkish public opinion, that Ankara should just disregard it. Not terribly democratic.]

It will be an interesting NATO summit in Istanbul this weekend.

One other point a contact raised with me yesterday. There are multiple reports of an Israeli presence in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. US diplomatic advisors have told me for instance of Israeli advisors to Kurdish Iraqi leaders, and Israeli involvement in the rise of a central bank in Kurdish Iraq. Whether there is some sort of covert relationship between Israel and Kurdish militias I have no knowledge of. But what this contact suggested to me yesterday was that if such contact exists, the real question to ask: is it private, or is it governmental? He hinted strongly that it was private.

Secondly, there's an interesting historical backdrop to this story that I was not previously aware of. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Israel was apparently very close to the father of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, a mullah. Apparently, Israel helped mullah Barzani flee Iraq when he was ill to get medical care in New York, where he ultimately died. Why this relationship? Two things. There were apparently lots of Jewish people from the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, many of them fled to Israel during Saddam's time, but there remains that tie. [In fact, some of them have the last name Barzani.] Secondly, as my contact explained the relationship between Israel and the Barzani family and the Iraqi Kurds to me, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

More: Here's a nice profile of Hersh from the Chicago Tribune (registration required). This is priceless:

[Hersh] inhabits a reality we can barely glimpse, crosscut by the chatter of encrypted satellite signals. For national security officials, leaking to Hersh is "generally better than writing a memo to the president," remarks his friend and competitor --Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus.

In recent months, The New Yorker editor David Remnick says, Hersh "seems to begin every phone call with the line, `It's worse than you think.'"

Phil Carter asks, why we should care about Sudan:

Why should we care about Sudan though? I could make the liberal internationalist argument that America should care about genocide wherever it happens because it's our obligation to care as a world leader. I could make a soft argument about the need for moral leadership, and how we should do here what we failed to do in Rwanda. (See Samantha Power's brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Problem from Hell" for more on these arguments.) But instead, I'll point out one not-so-insignificant fact:

Q: What nation hosted Osama Bin Laden and allowed Al Qaeda to thrive during the 1990s when Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan didn't want him?

A: Sudan.

We let states fail, and failed states crumble, at our own peril.

And discusses what it would take to stop the fighting and genocide in Sudan, here.

Writing in the Washington Times, Joel Mowbray contends a June 3 NYT article saying that Pentagon officials were being polygraphed in connection with the Chalabi case is wrong. In fact, he says, the FBI has conducted polygraphs of officials, but in Baghdad, not at the Pentagon itself.

To a number of civilian employees at the Pentagon, a New York Times story on June 3 came as quite a jolt: Some of them apparently already had been polygraphed as part of an investigation into Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi.

But it never happened. Nearly three weeks later, it appears that the implicated civilian employees at the Pentagon have not been polygraphed...

In fairness to the Times, it appears that the FBI has initiated some sort of investigation, including limited use of polygraph testing — but on people who were based in Baghdad.
The June 3 article, however, makes no such allowance and, in fact, is quite clear in identifying polygraphed employees as being "at the Pentagon." The lead sentence is unambiguous in announcing, "Federal investigators have begun administering polygraph examinations to civilian employees at the Pentagon."

Further down in the article, readers are informed that "officials familiar with the investigation say that they are ... likely to interview senior Pentagon officials." Three weeks later, it appears that has yet to happen — but the taint from the smear lingers.

So, then, who is being polygraphed in Baghdad?

Famous for DC. Spotted Michael Moore, Wonkette!, Mark Shields, several senators at the DC premier of Farenheit 911. Human Rights Campaigners outside with great blue signs and rolls of stickers saying, "George Bush: YOU'RE FIRED" which everyone had pasted to their chests. Moore gave them the thumbs up.

H.G. Wells on Africa, 1918. Some things have changed -- the League of Nations for which Wells was consulting has become the UN, for instance; shockingly much has stayed the same. As he writes:

...A practical consequence of this disarmament idea must be an effective control of the importation of arms into...Africa. That rat at the dykes of civilization, that ultimate expression of political scoundrelism, the gun runner, has to be kept under and stamped out in Africa as everywhere. A disarmament commission that has no forces available to prevent the arms trade will be just another Hague convention, just another vague, well intentioned, futile gesture.

Cynicism about the effectiveness of Hague conventions banning arms trafficking dating back to 1918....

I love this TNR series.

Darfur, here, here, and here. Kristof is putting together suggestions for what one can do, in the meantime, he's pointing people here.

"EPA: Amount of toxins in air, water and land increased at record level in 2002," Knight-Ridder reports.

The amount of toxic pollutants in America's air, water and land jumped 5 percent in 2002 - the highest increase since the federal government started keeping track of toxins in 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.

God, this is so depressing. We have got. to. get. rid. of. these. guys.

Juan Cole is brutal here on the issue of the two Shakirs.

There isn't actually any similarity at all between the names of chauffeur Mr. Ahmad Azzawi and intelligence official Lt. Col. Hikmat Ahmad, from an Arab point of view. (For a lot of purposes you would drop the middle names).

Mr. Carney, Mr. Lehman, journalist Stephen Hayes, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and all the other persons who gave a moment's thought to the idea that these two are the same person, based on these names, have wasted precious moments of their lives and have helped kill over 800 US servicemen, over an elementary error deriving from complete ignorance of Arabic and Arab culture.

Here's Hayes' take.

The WaPo's Glenn Kessler agreed to be questioned by the Plame special prosecutor on his two phone conversations witih I. Lewis Libby last July. Apparently, Lewis signed a waiver asking Kessler to testify because Libby says he did not mention Plame's name in the interviews. [Kessler's statement, via Romenesko].

Michael Ledeen writes, the Iranians want to defeat Bush.

So the Iranians seized some British "warships" yesterday, and arrested eight British naval officers...

Why?

...Because they were planning to attack (or have their surrogates attack) the oil terminals, silly. And why attack the oil terminals? Because they want to defeat President Bush in November, and they figure if they can get the price of oil up to around $60 a barrel, he'll lose to Kerry.

Frankly, it seems the Bush administration has given the mullahs a pretty good deal. Its chosen Iraqi pet Ahmad Chalabi was allegedly providing them sensitive US intelligence, the Americans removed their life-long enemy Saddam and have delivered them a Shiite-dominated Iraq, and the Bush administration has so overstretched the US military in Iraq that it hardly has the military resources, international (or domestic) credibility, or intellectual capacity to deal with Iran's or North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Why would they want to defeat him?

UPDATE: Gregory Djerejian of Belgravia Dispatch has more.

The Anaconda Strategy. David Ignatius has an inside source on how the administration's grand designs for Iraq devolved in the past few months into an effort to find a way to get out.

I'm told the NYT's Douglas Jehl is going to reveal the identity of Imperial Hubris author Anonymous in the coming days.

Update: Well, partially identify him, as "a 22-year veteran of the C.I.A. who is still serving in a senior counterterrorism post at the agency and headed the bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999."

Former intelligence officials identified the officer to The Times and noted that he was an overt employee of the C.I.A., but an intelligence official asked that his full name not be published because it could make him a target of Al Qaeda...

In a report issued in March, the staff of the Sept. 11 commission described the bin Laden unit as a place where a "sense of alarm about bin Laden was not widely shared or understood within the intelligence and policy communities." Another new book, "Ghost Wars," by Steve Coll of The Washington Post, was based in part on interviews with the officer, identified by his first name, Mike.

More: Reader JM writes, "If Steve Coll's 'Mike,', who headed the Bin Laden or 'Alec' Station from 1996-99 is, in fact, Anonymous, then this excerpt about him from James Bamford's just published "A Pretext For War" becomes interesting":

Increasingly under Mike ____, its CIA chief, Alec Station began taking on the feel of the king's executioner. After the decision against blowing up the Tarnak Farm and the hunting camp, Mike unleashed a blast of angry e-mails to an assortment of officials.

Some saw him as an unkempt, tactless, annoying manager who had little understanding of the international ramifications of some of his suggestions. Killing innocent women, children and members of the royal families in harebrained, and likely to fail, cruise missile assassinations was the best way to increase, not decrease, hatred and terrorism directed against the United States.

Complaints began coming in, even from the White House. Mike later acknowledged that many even within his own agancy believed he and his unit had gone off the deep end. "The rest of the CIA and the intelligence community looked on our efforts as eccentric and, at times, fanatic" he said. In 1999, after three years as head of Alec Station, Mike transferred to another job at CIA headquarters.

-- from p.216, James Bamford A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies, Doubleday, 2004.

Reader BH points out that Anonymous' "first book also says that Anonymous 'trained as a professional historian specializing in the diplomatic history of the British Empire.' (p. 277)."

I'm told he is one of the few high ranking CIA people to have served in both the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Intelligence.

Wolfowitz on Chalabi. Testifying at the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday:

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz insisted Tuesday that the Ahmed Chalabi's organization provided information that helped U.S. forces in Iraq, but conceded that some of the Iraqi politician's recent behavior was ``puzzling.''

Wolfowitz, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, denied that Chalabi was ever a favorite of the Pentagon, as he has been widely described...

``There's a mixed picture there,'' he said. ``We know from our commanders that some of the intelligence that his organization has provided us has saved American lives and enabled us to capture some key enemy targets.''

Responding to questions from Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the committee's top Democrat, Wolfowitz would only say that many Iraqi exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein had contacts with Iran, Iraq's enemy in the 1980s.

``Nothing in Iraq is black and white. I don't think I know of any figure we're dealing with who hasn't had in one way or another to compromise with the incredibly difficult circumstances of the last 35 years of that country's history,'' Wolfowitz said. ``It's not surprising that many of them - and Chalabi's not the only one - made contacts with countries like Iran or Syria or others.''

Chalabi has blamed the CIA for his problems and denied wrongdoing. The CIA and Chalabi have been at odds for years.

``I am surprised that he seems to be the target, for many years, of particular animus from some parts of this government,'' Wolfowitz said. ``But on the other hand, there are aspects of his recent behavior that are puzzling to me.'' He did not elaborate on what those activities were.

Vast majority of Iraqis still alive, the Onion reports, via Eric Umansky.

Kim Sun II, who was killed today by his terrorist captors in Iraq, was, the Post reports:

an evangelical Christian who had majored in Arabic, English and theology with university scholarships. [Kim] was working as a translator for a private South Korean contractor providing clothes and food to the U.S. military in Iraq, hoping to save enough money to fulfill his dream of becoming a missionary, his family said. "How could it have come to this?" a distraught neighbor, in tears, shouted at reporters as she consoled Kim's parents. "How can we have faith in the world anymore?"

Seeing this news and the grim picture of his parents one feels the same. But it also makes one angry. Kim's terrorist captors are reportedly associated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist the Bush administration failed to kill when it got the chance almost two years ago. Why has the Bush administration been so ineffective at targeting the real terrorists now flourishing in Iraq, since the war?

The facts speak for themselves. Iraq was not cooperating with al Qaeda or its offshoots like Zarqawi in a serious way before the war, certainly not to the degree that members of the Saudi and Pakistani security and intelligence services were. Zarqawi of course was mostly operating in northern Iraq, in terroritory under the control of the US no fly zone - a fact the Bush administration would like us not to remember. By any reading of the news, Iraq today must certainly rank the world HQ for Islamist radical terrorists, and is certainly one of the most insecure places in the world, a misery for its citizenry and foreign occupiers alike.

The State Department's radically revised numbers in its re-released Patterns of Global Terrorism report for the year 2003 make it impossible to show how much terrorism increased in Iraq itself in the year the US invaded and conducted a disatrous post-war turned-back-into-a-war. [And, ridiculously to my mind, the State Department keeps post-invasion Iraq in the list of "state sponsors of terrorism," even as Iraq by May 2003 was under US-led occupation and (incompetent, insecure) administration. Nevertheless, the graph here, of the Total International Attacks by Region, 1998-2003, shows the spike in the number of incidents of terrorism in the Middle East overall in the past five years. And do note that the State Department does not count attacks that wound and kill military personnel, including bombings of buildings and vehicles that kill US troops, for instance, reports of which we hear nearly daily from Iraq, as incidents of terror.

[Many thx to KD for explaining how to post graphics, and to DL for formatting suggestions.]

I think Daniel Pipes gets this wrong, but he's asking an interesting set of questions.

The Iranian government learned recently that American intelligence has deciphered its codes and can read its mail...Who is to blame for this development?...

[Perhaps] Chalabi did tell them that Washington had cracked the code. In which case:

· Perhaps he made this up and just happened to be right. (Plausible: Chalabi reportedly took steps in 1995 to trick the Iranians.)

· Or he thought he was providing disinformation but actually was telling the truth. (Unlikely: Too convoluted.)

· Or he knowingly divulged classified information. (Unlikely: Why should the Americans give Chalabi, a British subject known to be in close contact with the Iranian regime, a crown jewel of U.S. state secrets?)

Perhaps the question to ask is not, "Why should the Americans give Chalabi...a crown jewel of US state secrets?" as if it were a deliberate policy. But rather, how did one American without, presumably, authorized access, learn this information? Is what existed not a conspiracy, but more of an accident, born of a chaotic atmosphere that lacked the discipline of the home office? Of course, this theory would only explain how Chalabi allegedly might have learned the news, not why he allegedly passed it to the Iranians.

How right Matt Yglesias is, when he writes, regarding the al Qaeda-Iraq canard, that "Bush’s words may be semantically secure, but his intent has always been to mislead." Check it out.

Seems 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman may have his names mixed up. [Given that Lehman was apparently getting his information from allies of Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans, what does this indicate about how scrupulous was the OSP's intelligence analysis? All those foreign names?]

This from the WaPo, via Atrios:

An allegation that a high-ranking al Qaeda member was an officer in Saddam Hussein's private militia may have resulted from confusion over Iraqi names, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Former Navy secretary John Lehman, a Republican member of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Sunday that documents found in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaeda." Although he said the identity "still has to be confirmed," Lehman introduced the information on NBC's "Meet the Press" to counter a commission staff report that said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no "collaborative relationship."

Yesterday, the senior administration official said Lehman had probably confused two people who have similar-sounding names.

One of them is Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi, identified as an al Qaeda "fixer" in Malaysia. Officials say he served as an airport greeter for al Qaeda in January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, at a gathering for members who were to be involved in the attacks on the USS Cole, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Iraqi military documents, found last year, listed a similar name, Lt. Col. Hikmat Shakir Ahmad, on a roster of Hussein's militia, Saddam's Fedayeen.

"By most reckoning that would be someone else" other than the airport greeter, said the administration official...He added that the identification issue is still being studied but "it doesn't look like a match to most analysts."

In an interview yesterday, Lehman said it is still possible the man in Kuala Lumpur was affiliated with Hussein, even if he isn't the man on the Fedayeen roster. "It's one more instance where this is an intriguing possibility that needs to be run to ground," Lehman said. "The most intriguing part of it is not whether or not he was in the Fedayeen, but whether or not the guy who attended Kuala Lumpur had any connections to Iraqi intelligence. . . . We don't know."

Still possible that Azzawi might, in the great scheme of probability in the universe, be affiliated with Iraqi intelligence? That would be the triumph of fantasy over probability. He might also be a billion other things. What does Lehman want Azzawi to be? Iraqi intelligence of course. Does that make it true? No.

Spencer Ackerman has more on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, [not to confuse matters, but that would seem to actually be the same identity as the Iraqi Fedayeen Ltn. Col. described in the WaPo piece above, Hikmat Shakir Ahmad, who is not to be confused with Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi, the al Qaeda greeter in Malaysia. For future reference, Ackerman refers to the Iraqi Fedayeen colonel in his post as "Shakir"].

But because he is working from the background on Shakir provided by the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, Spencer would seem to be repeating the mistake that Hayes and indeed Lehman made. Conflating the identity of Shakir the Iraqi, and Shakir Azzawi, the al Qaeda greeter in Malaysia.

Indeed, it is confusing. Good for Pincus for clearing it up.

Here's Newsday's Knut Royce's take:

The CIA concluded 'a long time ago' that an al-Qaida associate who met with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia was not an officer in Saddam Hussein's army, as alleged Sunday by a Republican member of the 9/11 commission...

The claim that the Iraqi officer and al-Qaida figure are the same first appeared in a Wall Street Journal editorial on May 27. A similar account was then published in the June 7 edition of the Weekly Standard, which reported that the link was discovered by an analyst working for a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit under Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

As correspondent R writes, "Did the OSP get *anything* right?"

Here's a handy guide:

Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, a.k.a. Hikmat Shakir Ahmad = Iraqi Fedayeen Ltn. Col.

Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi = al Qaeda greeter in Malaysia

Ahmad Hikmat Shakir does not = Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi

Update: Spencer Ackerman points to this report by Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay on the issue of Shakir's identity, and it offers new information I hadn't seen in the other pieces: Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, the al Qaeda "greeter" in Kuala Lumpur, was an Iraqi, who "was employed with the aid of an Iraqi intelligence officer."

Ahmad Hikmat Shakir was employed with the aid of an Iraqi intelligence officer as a "greeter" or "facilitator" for Arabic-speaking visitors at the airport at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In January 2000, he accompanied two Sept. 11 hijackers from the airport to a hotel where the pair met with Ramzi Binalshibh, a key planner of the attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, who masterminded al-Qaida's strike on the USS Cole in October 2000.

There's no evidence that Ahmad Hikmat Shakir attended the meeting. Four days after it ended, he left Kuala Lumpur.

Several days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir was arrested in Qatar in possession of highly suspicious materials that appeared to link him with al-Qaida.

The Qataris inexplicably released him, and he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was arrested again. The Jordanians freed him under pressure from Iraq and Amnesty International, and he went to Baghdad.

That would seem to offer more credence to Lehman's suspicions. What's more, as Ackerman points out, twice, "This is something we probably can know. We have three individuals in custody who either were directly present at the Kuala Lumpur meeting or pulled its strings: 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Kuala Lumpur attendees Khallad bin Attash and Yazid Sufaat."

If it's knowable, why don't we know it?

And finally, why in the world did Amesty International push for Ahmad Hikmat Shakir's release from Jordanian custody? After all, while people may be quibbling over whether he had any connection to the Iraqi security services, no one argues that he was not affiliated with al Qaeda.

Post Script: I think Ana Marie Cox gets this just about right.

More: Reader N writes Wednesday:

From what Amnesty said at the time, I don't think they 'pushed for his release' so much as asked the Jordanians for confirmation that he was being humanely treated and whether charges would be brought:

[See this Amnesty report.]

There's something a little bathetic about the final comments, given what we now appear to know, but in context it seems like form-letter stuff rather than, say, a protracted letter-writing campaign for a prisoner of conscience. So I think the K-R report, written well after the fact, overstates Amnesty's role here...

Thanks much for the letters.