The Iraq Intelligence Horror Story Just Won't End

The story of how this administration manipulated intelligence to take the nation into a disastrous war on false pretenses is the nightmare that keeps on giving.

Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein brings us the story of Patrick Lang interviewing for a job with Douglas Feith, one of the key players in manufacturing the war. Lang had headed up the Middle East, South Asia and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency and headed up the Pentagon's spying efforts. Lang, a former Green Beret, was interviewing for a job running the DoD's counterinsurgency office.

One of the people he had to impress was Feith, the Defense Department’s number three official and a leading player in the clique of neoconservatives who had taken over the government’s national security apparatus.[...]

“He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me,” Lang recalled, “ which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers — they always had briefing papers, you know — about me.

“He’s looking at this stuff, and he says, ‘I’ve heard of you. I heard of you.’

“He says, ‘Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?’

“And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s really true.’

‘That’s too bad,” Feith said.

The audience howled.

“That was the end of the interview,” Lang said. “I’m not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out.”

For even more horror, read the whole article. Photo: Douglas Feith via State Department