Juan Cole reacts to news that the Bush White House repeatedly asked the CIA to spy on him, in order to discredit his reputation and quiet his criticisms of the Iraq war:
What alarms me most of all in the nakedly illegal deployment of the CIA against an academic for the explicit purpose of destroying his reputation for political purposes is that I know I am a relatively small fish and it seems to me rather likely that I was not the only target of the baleful team at the White House. After the Valerie Plame affair, it seemed clear that there was nothing those people wouldn’t stoop to.
You wonder how many critics were effectively “destroyed.” It is sad that a politics of personal destruction was the response by the Bush White House to an attempt of a citizen to reason in public about a matter of great public interest. They have brought great shame upon the traditions of the White House, which go back to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, who had hoped that checks and balances would forestall such abuses of power.
History, I suspect, will treat them as the nemeses of American decline. They helped undermine America's soft and hard power and permanently tainted its moral standing. I wonder what else Mr Carle is going to reveal in his forthcoming book. What many of these ruthless men forgot is that other decent men and women were among them. And one day we'll hear more of their stories.
The Dish 