Two alternatives

It's plain -- though denied and wrapped in the flag to prevent it being proclaimed -- that the victor in Bush's invasion is not Iraq, it's not America, it's Iran.

The question is how could this not have been foreseen by anyone with the slightest bit of wisdom.

Only a complete dupe dominated by the most craven and shallow of idealogues

OR

a traitor

could bring this about.

So, which ones are they? The Bush Administration certainly loves to throw charges of terrorist sympathizer or appeaser around -- and not a few of their acolytes accused those opposed to the war as treason -- more projection?

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday...

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.

The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.

According to the Senate report, the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity unit concluded in 2003 that Ledeen "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar."

The counterintelligence unit said, however, that Ledeen's association with Ghorbanifar "was widely known, and therefore it should be presumed other foreign intelligence services, including those of Iran, would know."

Unwitting will be on Ledeen's tombstone, as it is his mantra.

And yet, the man continues to lie, be fooled, and collect ample right-wing money. A useful tool, but a tool first.

Ghorbinifar has been a known fraud for more than 20 years, dating all the way back to the original Iran-Contra scandal. Yet many of the assholes involved in that stupid stunt are present in this tale; Ghorbanifar, Ledeen, Elliot Abrams. If the media had one wit of curiosity rather than just inhaling Bush-Pole in 2002/2003 they could have easily revealed this stupidity.

But they didn't care.

And given the coverage the Phase II report received yesterday and today -- many of them still don't.