Iraqi Leadership Responds Furiously to Allegations in New Woodward Book
By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch
"The United States has spied extensively on Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi government leaders, the American investigative journalist Bob Woodward has revealed.
“We know everything he says,” the journalist quotes one source as saying, in The War Within, his fourth book on George Bush’s presidency. The US administration’s decision to spy continually on Mr Maliki shows deep distrust of the Iraqi leadership by the US. The surveillance took place even while Mr Maliki was speaking to Mr Bush by video-phone once a week......
Though this motive is not referred to in Mr Woodward’s book the prime aim of US espionage targeting Iraqi officials has been to find out the true relations between the Baghdad government and Iran,. Washington has been deeply suspicious of Mr Maliki and his predominantly Shia government for maintaining close relations with Tehran even while the US was threatening to go to war with Iran.....
Mr Woodward writes very much from a Washington viewpoint even where he is critical of the White House. He assumes that little happens in Iraq that is not initiated by the US. In the summary of the book published so far there is little mention of the central role of Iran and the Shia-Sunni conflict inside Iraq in determining the level of violence.
The prime minister spent long years of exile in Syria and his most important ally in Iraq is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq which was founded on Iran’s initiative in Tehran in 1982. So Mr Maliki and his associates were welll used to Syrian and Iranian security monitoring their activities.
Overall, the extent of US surveillance of its Shia and Kurdish allies in Iraq reveals a deep anxiety in Washington that in supporting a government in Baghdad dominated by Shia Islamic parties it has promoted a government that is closer to Iran than the US."
By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch
"The United States has spied extensively on Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi government leaders, the American investigative journalist Bob Woodward has revealed.
“We know everything he says,” the journalist quotes one source as saying, in The War Within, his fourth book on George Bush’s presidency. The US administration’s decision to spy continually on Mr Maliki shows deep distrust of the Iraqi leadership by the US. The surveillance took place even while Mr Maliki was speaking to Mr Bush by video-phone once a week......
Though this motive is not referred to in Mr Woodward’s book the prime aim of US espionage targeting Iraqi officials has been to find out the true relations between the Baghdad government and Iran,. Washington has been deeply suspicious of Mr Maliki and his predominantly Shia government for maintaining close relations with Tehran even while the US was threatening to go to war with Iran.....
Mr Woodward writes very much from a Washington viewpoint even where he is critical of the White House. He assumes that little happens in Iraq that is not initiated by the US. In the summary of the book published so far there is little mention of the central role of Iran and the Shia-Sunni conflict inside Iraq in determining the level of violence.
The prime minister spent long years of exile in Syria and his most important ally in Iraq is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq which was founded on Iran’s initiative in Tehran in 1982. So Mr Maliki and his associates were welll used to Syrian and Iranian security monitoring their activities.
Overall, the extent of US surveillance of its Shia and Kurdish allies in Iraq reveals a deep anxiety in Washington that in supporting a government in Baghdad dominated by Shia Islamic parties it has promoted a government that is closer to Iran than the US."
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