> Rumsefeld's memo was arrogant and callous, for sure, but it's still
> at odds with the admin's public stance. And it makes you wonder -
> who's leaking this stuff to the NYT? First the Hadley memo fucks up
> the meeting with Maliki, and now this. It has to be someone inside
> the admin - these things don't circulate that widely, do they?
>
I think the question these days is not so much who is leaking this stuff, but who isn't? It's normal course of events when the wheels start badly falling off - the whole apparatus breaks up into little factions, all of whom have their own ideas about what to do next and at least one of whom at any one time is likely to believe that a strategic leak will serve their own interests. At a minimum, you've got the following groups involved:
1) The State Department 2) The Department of Defense 3) The White House 4) The US Embassy in Iraq 5) The Army 6) The CIA
Multiply these by two because each organisation will have at least two factions working within it. This is where the kernel of the truth to the (in general fallacious) idea that it is impossible to keep a conspiracy secret is - it is true that you need a basic level of organisational togetherness before you can start having secrets.
If you look back at a history of Vietnam, this sort of thing became absolutely rife in the closing stages, as Kissinger, Schlesinger, Martin, Thieu and all of their various staffs started leaking like made against each other. The "Decent Interval" has begun, the clock is ticking and if you know anyone who you care about and who is an Iraqi living in Iraq you need to be telling them to *not* wait for things to get better, *not* assume that a disaster isn't imminent and *not* assume that it will be possible to evacuate later on when the shit starts hitting the fan. I'm gonna write something about this for the Guardian blog and I'd appreciate anyone who can spreading the message as far as possible, because as far as I can tell, the coalition does not appear to currently have even the minimal and shamefully underprepared evacuation plans for its local contacts and employees that the US had in the last days of Saigon.
best dd
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