Wednesday, Jenkins from DoD called and asked for an appointment ASAP. I had Thursday at 3:00 p.m. open, so I booked him for that. Jenkins is ex-military and does everything by the book; likewise, he’s always on time.
“Nice to see you again,” I began, while shaking his hand, “it’s been a while.”
“About three years and eight months,” Jenkins brusquely replied as he seated himself without further ado.
“What can I help you with, then?” I said, settling in behind my desk.
Jenkins was never a man to waste time or mince words, and he was in perfect character Thursday afternoon. “Two things. First, there’s a Senate Intelligence Committee report that came out today.”
“Heard about that,” I confirmed, “but haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”
“Second, I understand that last December, you started a blog.”
“That’s correct,” I admitted, “and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of people read it.”
“And just how,” Jenkins snorted, “would you know that?”
“Oh, well, you can get software to count visitors, hits, kilobytes downloaded, that sort of thing. Nice graphic reports, too.”
“Oh great,” Jenkins replied sarcastically, “that’s just great. So when you write something, it pretty much becomes common knowledge the next day, huh?”
“Well,” I modestly demurred, “maybe not the same way things do when Ariana Huffington writes about them in her blog, but for all practical purposes, I would have to agree that when I post something in my blog, it definitely becomes public information.”
“We figured as much,” Jenkins growled, “and that’s why I’m here. We don’t want you posting anything on that blog of yours concerning that report.”
“Who’s this ‘we’ you’re talking about,” I volleyed back gamely, “have you suddenly become some sort of nobility, gotten a job as a newspaper editor, or contracted tapeworm?”
Jenkins rose menacingly from his seat and leaned over my desk, his roseate nose inches from mine. “You know damn well who I mean by ‘we,’ Collins!”
“Oh,” I chuckled blithely, “of course. You mean my co-conspirators in the Iraq invasion pretext project.”
Jenkins drew back, seating himself again. “Jump to whatever conclusions you want, Collins.”
“Could you tell me,” I inquired, “just one good reason why the people collectively known as ‘we’ should care if I mention the Senate Intelligence Committee report on my blog?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Collins!” Jenkins roared.
“Who’s playing dumb?” I smiled coyly. “What’s in the report you don’t want posted on my blog? I’m just guessing here, because all I know is what I’ve seen in the news reports last night and today, but, as near as I can tell, the report says that the Administration ignored analyses which predicted a bunch of things that subsequently happened. So, Big George the Decider told the press today something along the lines of ‘there were lots of predictions made before the invasion, so what?’ – right? Sure, so now some people have the gall to point out that the coterie of zealots who wanted war ignored advice that al Qaeda would probably try to exploit any postwar transition in Iraq by replicating the tactics it used in Afghanistan to mount hit-and-run operations against US personnel. Now that the Democrats control the Senate and can set the agenda for committees like Intelligence, some of them want to harp on the fact that you guys paid no attention when experts warned you that some militant Islamists in Iraq might benefit from increases in funding and popular support and could choose to conduct terrorist attacks against US forces in Iraq. They want to grandstand at press conferences, as politicians like to do, and hold up that report and declare that the president and his team would not listen when those who knew the facts and who were not blinded by ideology told them that some elements in the Iranian government could decide to oppose the US presence in Iraq; or that there was a significant chance that domestic groups in Iraq would engage in violent conflict with each other after the invasion, catching our forces in the middle. I mean, come on, you don’t have to be Talleyrand to realize that when experts on a region like the Middle East tell you that establishing a stable democracy in Iraq will be a long, difficult and probably turbulent process, they’re probably right!”
I could see the wind spill out of Jenkins sails. “Yeah,” he muttered, shaking his head, “all that stuff is in there. Of course it is. We both read the same analysis papers back then. But did you advise anyone against invading Iraq? Did you?”
“I wasn’t hired to advise you on whether or not to invade Iraq,” I reminded him, “I was hired to assist with the invention of bogus reasons to invade it. Besides, so what? No doubt tomorrow, somebody else on your side will accuse the critics of cherry-picking the facts, engaging in Monday morning quarterbacking and applying twenty-twenty hindsight for partisan political gain, then start yodeling to the rafters about how much better the world is without Saddam Hussein.”
“Nobody on our side is prepared to make such a fool of himself!” Jenkins protested.
“You wish,” I sarcastically returned, “Kit Bond is on the committee, isn’t he?”
At that, Jenkins hung his head in his hands. “Yeah. Damn it Collins, if we had only found one lousy weapon of mass destruction!”
“Would that change the fact that Iraq is an artificial country created by Western powers after World War I? Would the decades of Sunni repression of other ethnic groups in that artificial hell hole suddenly vanish into thin air? Would the provinces full of Sunnis and devoid of petroleum miraculously sprout their own oil fields? Did you expect decades, nay, centuries of blood feuds and grudge matches to suddenly evaporate the day after those pathetic, backward, benighted, Neolithic tribal natives held an election? Hell, man, half of them don’t even know what an election is! What kind of Panglossian wonderland were you guys living in, anyway?”
Jenkins began sobbing, softly, his huge shoulders moving up and down. “Please, stop. I… I know you’re right. I just… I just can’t stand to get my face rubbed in it, okay? Of course, it won’t make any difference if you put those things in your blog.” He looked up at me, his eyes now red and nicely swollen, “Everybody will be talking about that. Just don’t mention… you know… the other stuff… the stuff that isn’t in the report.”
“You mean like the fact that you guys knew Curveball was a lying, drunken sociopathic liar from the get-go and still used his ravings to justify the invasion?”
“Ah, I think that’s actually in the report,” Jenkins said, wiping his face with a Dior handkerchief that I so thoughtfully proffered, “I’m not sure. The damn thing’s three hundred pages long and I’ve only had about two hours to read it so far.”
“Oh, then, such as when Ahmed Chalabi played you guys like brook trout before you got to read in the newspapers that he was an Iranian agent?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s in there, too,” Jenkins sighed, “but not totally sure.”
“Oh, then you mean how Nouri al-Maliki is covertly supporting Shi’ite dead squads?”
“No, of course not – everybody knows that,” Jenkins replied.
“How members of the Iraqi government embezzled billions of dollars, flown direct to them in US cargo jets as stacked hundred dollar bills on shipping pallets?”
“Oh, no,” Jenkins said, sitting up and helping himself to a glass of Perrier I held out for him, “that’s never been a secret, at least not as I can remember.”
“Those White House memoranda ordering torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib?”
“Yesterday’s news, even if somebody did find them,” Jenkins opined, “which they never will.”
“Those top-secret orders to re-allocate funding for Dragon Skin body armor to pad defense contracts for unscheduled over-runs on large Republican pork barrel weapons systems?”
“DoD spends its money as it sees fit, and any order can be classified top secret if a general officer says so.”
“US officials accepting bribes to put Iraqis on military transports out of the country?”
“Oh, hell, who couldn’t sympathize with some sand monkey who could afford a ticket out of Iraq, anyway? No big deal.”
“Cheney’s covert plot with the Israeli right and the Saudis to fund Sunni militias to fight Shi’ite forces in the Iraqi civil war?”
“Seymour Hirsch covered that in the New Yorker.”
“Gee, I must have missed that issue. How about the PNAC party house with all those teenage girls and boys in it?”
“Clinton,” Jenkins tossed off, “the Democrats would never touch it.”
“James Baker working for a creditor consortium while special ambassador to resolve Iraqi debts?”
“Never flew in the first place,” Jenkins observed, “people just said it was business as usual.”
“That, uh, unexpected meeting between Condi and Valerie?”
“The only existing videos are too grainy to identify either of them.”
“Halliburton’s heroin factories in Afghanistan?”
“Nah,” Jenkins shrugged, “nobody cares what happens in Afghanistan.”
“Payoffs to Bush Administration cronies in the Oil-for-Food deal?”
“What?”
“You know,” I clarified, “people in the Administration who got their cut of the United Nations kickback scheme before the invasion? And how, afterwards, they got percentages of that ten billion dollars the Coalition Provisional Authority received when the UN turned the program over to them?”
Jenkins turned bright red. “Those bastards! How much?”
“Oh, millions, I guess. You didn’t know?”
“Didn’t know?” Now Jenkins was livid. “I didn’t get one lousy dime!”
“Gee, I’m sorry to hear that,” I commiserated, “if it’s any consolation, I never got anything, either…”
“Why the hell should you get anything?” Jenkins demanded. “You’re just a consultant! Me, I’ve been kissing up to those… those…”
“Great Americans?” I offered.
“[Deleted]!” Jenkins roared. “How dare you call the [deleted] [deleted]-ing [deleted] who cut me out of a huge kickback deal like that ‘great Americans?’” Jenkins booted my desk-side trash basket across the room in frustration.
“Sorry,” I resolutely continued, “It’s all water under the bridge now, anyway. Hey,” I paused as an idea came to me, “why don’t you just lean on a few of them for ‘personal loans’ while intimating that you know what they did?”
Jenkins considered my suggestion. “Not a bad idea,” he finally said, “maybe I will. But the other stuff… you know, the really, really bad stuff… you won’t mention that in your blog will you?”
“Well,” I replied slyly, “certainly not any time soon.”