I once enjoyed Larry Franklin as a storyteller and weaver of adventures. Now he is an FBI double agent — which is not exactly what it is when the FBI threatens you with arrest but then asks you to assist for future leniency. And given this is what seemed to have happened in 2004, it’s neither double agentry nor exclusive news. But what gets me is why he gave info to the media and the AIPAC lobbyists: “I knew what the Iranians had prepared for us in Iraq. Sure, they were glad we would knock off Saddam. But as soon as we got in, they were not going to allow us to succeed, nor were they going to allow us to pull out without pain.” Huh? Perhaps he confuses Washington’s basebuilding strategists and their neoconservative muses with the Iranian government. There was never an intention to pull out, as we know now and as Bunny Greenhouse observed in early 2003. Larry claims he did nothing morally wrong, and only kept those 83 classified documents at his house because he needed to keep up his expertise on behalf of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, who were counting on him. Expertise? The only thing being reported here is the banal evilness of our government, and the cretins and head cases who enthusiastically serve it. Did it never occur to Larry that he might have used his patriotism and inside information to preserve Iraqi sovereignty, allowing Iraqis live their lives, solve their own political problems, sell their oil — and isolate Iran, if that was the goal? At least Saddam Hussein, unlike our man Chalabi, considered (as we apparently still do) Iran a threat! No, instead, there was money to be made, lives to be destroyed, and blood to be spilled. Bring the troops home now!

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