Here We Go Again

The war between the neo-con cabal in the Defense Department and CIA/State Dept. has opened a new front.

Pentagon hardliners pressing for regime change in Iran have held secret and unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal, according to administration officials. The officials said at least two Pentagon officials working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s. The administration officials who disclosed the secret meetings to Newsday said the talks with Ghorbanifar were not authorized by the White House and appeared to be aimed at undercutting current sensitive back channel negotiations with the Iranian regime.

"They [the Pentagon officials] were talking to him [Ghorbanifar] about stuff which they weren't officially authorized to do," said a senior administration official. "It was only accidentally that certain parts of our government learned about it." [...] [A second administration source] said that the immediate objective of the Pentagon hardliners appears to be to "antagonize Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden U.S. policy against them." He confirmed that Secretary of State Colin Powell complained directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld several days ago about Feith's policy shop conducting missions that countered U.S. policy.

Add this to the speculation that the leaks regarding Powell and Armitage leaving the administration were orchestrated by the same clique. Then add the redistricting grabs in Texas, Colorado, and Georgia, the California recall, Grover Norquist's belief that "bipartisanship is date rape," and the "Republican riots" during the Florida recount, and it gets harder and harder to deny that the defining characteristic of today's conservative movement is a putsch mentality.