Did anyone else catch this? Here we have the WaPo presenting Simone Ledeen as the sensitive but spunky accidental tourist working in Iraq, almost, gosh, by pure coincidence….
Ledeen’s journey to Baghdad began two weeks earlier when she received an e-mail out of the blue from the Pentagon’s White House liaison office. The Sept. 16 message informed her that the occupation government in Iraq needed employees to prepare for an international conference. “This is an amazing opportunity to move forward on the global war on terror,” the e-mail read.
For Ledeen, the offer seemed like fate. One of her family friends had been killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and it had affected her family deeply. Without hesitation, she responded “Sure” to the e-mail and waited — for an interview, a background check or some other follow-up. Apparently none was necessary. A week later, she got a second e-mail telling her to look for a packet in the mail regarding her move to Baghdad.
Er….Randomly selected young republican? “out of the blue”? How about….daughter of the man who forged the Niger-Uranium documents and handed them over to SISMI?
In early 2002 Hadley was tasked with shutting down the unauthorized meetings Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin and Michael Ledeen were holding with Iraqi and Iranian exiles, and Italian intelligence figures including the head of SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, in Rome in late 2001.
On September 9th, 2002, Hadley met with Pollari in Washington. According to the Italian daily La Repubblica Pollari was there to press the details of the Niger-uranium story. The NSC has now confirmed that the meeting took place but claims it was a brief meeting and that no one present remembers the yellowcake story coming up.
In other words, it’s a quite hazy denial if it’s even a denial at all.
The WaPo article mentions Michael Ledeen in passing:
“The 28-year-old daughter of neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen…” but fails to mention that Papa Mike is armpit deep in the administrations propaganda blitz in the runup to the war. You can’t make this stuff up.
Yet more evidence, at least in my mind, of how the NeoCons have gamed the media. It appears that it’s entirely possible that Woodward is not the only NeoCon stenographer at the WaPo. I don’t have any illusions about my ability to create some kind of accountability moment, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could get Ariana Eunjung Cha, the author of the credulous WaPo article, to come clean about whether or not she knew that the Ledeen Clan was leading her down the path?
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