Insane Idea - Let's Use Saddam's Nutcases Against Iran!

I meant to post about this the other day. Steve Soto at The Left Coaster picked up a Raw Story report which says the White House is outsourcing it's intelligence gathering and regime destabilizing operations in Iran to the MeK, a bunch of ex-Saddam enforcers led by a man who thinks he is the Muslim messiah.

According to anonymous intelligence officials, Cheney and Rumsfeld have picked up where Saddam left off, and enabled the MEK to work from its base of operations inside Iraq near the Iranian border to wage destabilization activities against the Iranian regime, including the bombings and killing of innocent Iranians. These intelligence officials, and those of other countries feel that the MEK cannot be controlled, and that it is insane for the United States to use a known terrorist group to undermine the Iranian regime and to rely on intelligence gathered by such a group.

Back in December I wrote about how the US troops have been pulled from Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where the bulk of the MeK were "contained", and their replacing with 120 lightly armed Bulgarian soldiers. Those Bulgars are in charge of 3,000 or so armed nutcases based right next to a major munitions dump and Bulgarians were variously told that they would be guarding a "refugee camp" or "Iraqi prisoners charged with murder and rape". I asked "Could the Bush administration be plotting to unleash the MEK on Iran again...at the expense of 120 Bulgarian troops?"

It hasn't come to that as yet, but the signs are that the MeK are being used as special operations footsoldiers to create violent havoc in Iran as well as being the source of most of the "disturbing intelligence" about Iran's supposed nuclear weapons program. ANY intelligence from such a source is unbelievable unless and until verified elsewhere.

And in comments to that December post, Professor Paul Sheldon Foote of California State University wrote:

The continued presence of the American military at Camp Ashraf, Iraq leaves the neo-conservatives (neo-Trotskyites) open to future Freedom of Information Act requests for American military documents and to revelations by American veterans who leave the military service.

With a small unit of the Bulgarian Army at Camp Ashraf, Iraq, it would be easy for the neo-conservatives (neo-Trotskyites) to arrange for MEK terrorists to enter Iran for spying or for terrorism with less fear of later public disclosures.

The only way to characterize using the MeK in this way is utterly insane.