Either the whole US intelligence community is so incompetent that it can’t do what a few people in a basement in Washington with an internet connection does or the value of what SITE do is hardly what it claims. My take is the later.

I’ll check to see what Kohlmann has to say.

“Thursday, September 27, 2007
SISMI in Afghanistan

None of us have much sympathy for SISMI, the fascist branch of Italian military intelligence, but this statement by Mario D’Auria to Sky News is revealing. You see, his son, Lorenzo D’Auria (whom they say was an expert on Afghanistan), married with 3 kids, was send on a covert operation to monitor Afghanistan’s frontier with Iran and was promptly kidnapped -say accounts- by Mullah Khuda-e-Dad, who was going to turn them over to the Taliban. He was riddled with bullets in the rescue operation launched by British special forces and lies mortally wounded in an Italian military hospital.

“He and his partner were sent to make an incursion across the frontier, because the Italian clandestine services were charged with discovering whether weapons were coming through there to satisfy Bush, who’s an arms trader himself”

Moreover, Mario says that he cannot go the the hospital to see his son because after his statement to the press, SISMI would have him arrested.

So now the question. Does this not sound like that SISMI has been recruited to plant evidence of Iranian arms smuggling into Afghanistan?”
Labels: Afghanistan, Italy, Taliban
posted by Nur-al-Cubicle | 8:39 PM

Herat station chief could perhaps shed further light on such matters, interesting that Italy shares a border region of Herat alongside American posts at Farah.

Isn’t this the same administration that recently shut down the group headed by Scheuer that was investigating bin Laden?

There may be more to the Bush gang that mere idiocy. Perhaps they have associates among the Muslim Bros. needing protection.

It might be interesting to tabulate all the times that the Bush Thugs tipped off or assisted Al Qaeda.

E.g., “Operation Enduring Feeedom”

The issue over the leak, isn’t whether or not SITE is reliable or who they work for…those are side issues for another time. The issue is who in the Bush administration leaked the video before al Qaeda released it, and thus destroyed a years-long investigation? Because the leak notified al Qaeda that their internet security had been breached. As a result, al Qaeda plugged those holes and they can’t be used again.

This is something the administration has a record of doing either through incompetence or for other reasons. Perhaps political calculations? Because the leak occurred at the same time Gen. Petraeus was speaking to Congress about progress [or lack of] in Iraq. And the first people the leakers leak to is Fox News, and they just happen to be a mouthpiece for the White House. What a coincidence, don’t you think?

If you’re interested, Keith Olbermann interviewed Evan Kohlmann last night about the impact the leak will have on intelligence. Kohlmann used to work for SITE and he now has his own private company called globalterroralert.com, which does similar work, and he also blogs for the Counterterrorismblog.org. One of the things Kohlmann points out is that whoever in the administration was in charge of distributing the video to law enforcement didn’t do their job, becaise Fox News had the video before FBI agents did.