Militarism and Treason

With every smirking insinuation of treason against ordinary Americans who dared to question our invasion of Iraq, the right wing has a huge amount of explaining to do - the arrest of Franklin, one of Wolfowitz's minions suggests that the out-of-control security and lobbying apparatus of the far right is much more interested in perpetrating it's agenda than in the safety and freedom of the American people. The last sentence in the story is:

FBI counterintelligence investigators last year questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether other Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office might have been involved in passing classified information to Chalabi or to AIPAC, sources have said.

If you've ever read a Le Carre novel, you get the idea that the primary motivation of a security apparatus, like all bureaucracy, is to perpetuate itself. The motivation for passing these documents would presumably be to prop up Chalabi, and at the least to use AIPAC to pressure Congress on foreign policy.

I think it's reasonable to ask if security or military elements of the Israeli government have a undue influence on or review of policy-making in this area by the White House and Pentagon, to the extent that it is ordinary to pass on classified documents outside the normal channels expected between allies. The motivation for this unusual war has always been fuzzy, and the only believable one has been Wolfowitz's idea of a strong stationing of american troops in the middle east.

Related in what it might say about the attitude of our own militarists, I am bothered by the U.S. inaction on the Israeli military's investigation of itself in Rachel Corrie's possible murder. It suggests our military relationship with Israel is more important than the truth of a death of a left-wing American girl. Calls for investigations by Senators Murray and Cantwell from Washington State were very strongly rebuffed, and quietly dropped.