OSP: Watch this story

[mburbank]

Both The Nation and Mother Jones have already reported on the OSP, Office of Special Plans, a department created within the pentagon by the administration that comandeered and circumvented normal inteligence analysis and funelled it directly to the administration during the lead up to the Iraq war. Now Salon.com is running a major story on the OSP's dealings written by the former duty officer of the North Africa desk at the pentagon, a woman who was in a position to have seen both the OSP's analysis, and the raw intelligence the Pentagon was working with.

The current administration mantra regarding the lack of WMD in Iraq is "We all got fooled." The argument made in these articles is that this is not the case, or if it is that the adminisytration was 'fooled' by the OSP, an agency they created which systematically replaced normal professional intelligence analysis and which was driven by a set agenda to use and in some cases edit only intelligence which suported war with Iraq, often removing key pieces of information and inbcluding information which everyone outside the OSP found unreliable. Cases in point are the yellowcake uranium forgeries and pretty much every bit of intelligence offered up by Ahmed Chalabi, who incidentally turned on the US testerday and now supports radical shiite cleric Sistani.

So far only the lefty press has covered this story, but it's moving into the mainstream along much the same lines the Judy Pjalme story did. I think that story is far from over (although I fear it will only bear it;s bitter fruit after the election, ala Nixon) and I think this story bears watching as well.