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Saturday, April 30, 2005

Oh My Gosh. I mean Goss's Gosh:

Ken Silverstein reports in the LA Times
Last week, the CIA sent an executive jet here to ferry the chief of Sudan's intelligence agency to Washington [big Snip] Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh , who otherwise declined comment for this article, told The Times: "We have a strong partnership with the CIA. The information we have provided has been very useful to the United States."

The paradox of a U.S.-Sudanese intelligence partnership is personified by Gosh.

Members of Congress accused him and other senior Sudanese officials of directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur. During the 1990s, the Mukhabarat assigned Gosh to be its Al Qaeda minder. In that role he had regular contacts with Bin Laden, a former Mukhabarat official confirmed.

Today, Gosh is keeping in contact with the office of CIA Director Porter J. Goss and senior agency officials.


Gosh and Goss are Gross.

I recall that right wing bloggers accused liberals of hypocricy for non denouncing mass murder in Darfur (although liberals did denounce mass murder in Darfour). Now it seems that Bush and Rice have decided that murder is OK so long as the murderers cooperate in the war on terror. This reminds me that the Bush administration only got all idealistic about Iraq when all arguments that the invasion directly served US interests turned out to be based on illusions or lies.

The article does have a very serious fault already pointed out by Island of Balta (via Kevin Drum) Silverstein quotes anonymous Sudanese officials repeated a debunked claim "Sudanese officials said their government, alarmed by the frayed ties, tried repeatedly without success to regain favor by turning over Bin Laden to either the Saudis or the U.S." but does not note that the bipartisan 9/11 commission concluded that the claim is false. Instead Silverstein quotes a denial by a Clinton administration official John Prendergast "Their promises of cooperation were totally opportunistic and were designed to get sanctions removed," making it a he said/he said not a he said/he said and non partisan investigators agree. There was no need to talk about Sudanese relations with the Clinton administration, but if the issue is raised, the very highly relevant conclusion of the 9/11 commission staff (headed by a friend and co-author of Rice) really must be noted.

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