Rozen on Ghorbanifar
Am behind on my reading and just getting to Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer’s article on the Paris Iranian exiles and their influence on how Washington sees Tehran. Rozen has been doing excellent work on the continued role of Ghorbanifar, who had been involved in the Iran/Contra scandal and is sort of an even sleazier Ahmad Chalabi figure with less personal political ambition.
Laura Rozen’s War and Piece Web site is always worth checking out.
One comment on Pakistan and its contribution to getting al-Qaeda. In fact, Musharraf is virtually the only one who has delivered any goods on that front. Abu Zubayda, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and some 600 others have been caught by Pakistani security forces in cooperation with the FBI and CIA (the other unsung heroes in this effort). Musharraf hasn’t found the big two, but then they may not be in Pakistan. The US, with 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, hasn’t captured nearly as many straight al-Qaeda, nor nearly as many important operatives, since April of 2002 as the Pakistanis have.