I hope they find the f*cker that leaks this info and f*cking castrate him.

Is there any way the US can just bail out of the middle east completely and keep the relatively cheap oil flowing?

It's extra-ironic that we claim to be fighting the 'war on terror', but we're deliberately spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get schools in Iran bombed.

The reason we're so upset with Iran isn't because of the nukes. It's because they don't like us, and they're sitting on our oil. What makes them an imminent threat isn't WMDs, but their oil bourse, where they sell in Euros, and not dollars.

If the dollar falls from its status as the world's reserve currency, the United States' days as a world power are done. It's really that simple. Iran's oil bourse is a stark threat to our world financial hegemony, and that's the real reason we're so desperately trying to take down their government.

What the administration probably doesn't realize is that the dollar will falter anyway; we've been abusing it too long. Attacking Iran will do us no good at all. But they see the dollar go down and down and down; the bourse is involved with that, so they're trying to destroy it using the only tool they think they have available, the military.

I've been saying this for a couple of years now. My only real surprise is that we haven't overtly attacked yet, as opposed to injecting massive funds into terrorist campaigns inside the country.

Remember: we signed a TREATY that explicitly says, in the clearest possible language, that Iran is entitled to a civilian nuclear power program; the treaty uses 'inalienable right' wording. It's that strong. All this screaming and yelling about their nuclear program is a coverup. They have the right to do what they're doing; we signed a treaty that promised they could.

The real threat is that oil bourse, and I repeat my prediction that we will continue to ratchet up tension against them until it's closed, or until we topple their government.

Valerie Plame?

Do you think the Iranians are complete morons? Of course they know we have special-ops troops in their country. There's no opsec violation here, unlike certain other times, as Alien13z mentioned. In fact, there's no real data at all other than the ramp-up of funding, which is something that I as a citizen find it pretty critical to know, since I do not want this to happen and a majority of my fellow citizens are in agreement with me.

Meanwhile, the placement of Iranian special operations troops in this country would be a rationale for going nuclear. It's a far cry from the days when the Japanese could be labeled "dirty, treacherous japs" for attacking Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war. I imagine we're just handing the Iranian government a PR victory as they paint dissidents and opponents as being the tools of foreigners.

C'mon, Malor, please. Let's try to be grown ups.

Personally, I've got no problem with covert ops. We should be at least gathering intel on any potential threat, and while I certainly think the administration is making Iran out to be a bigger threat than it really is (and a much more imminent one) it's pretty indisputable that it could constitute some kind of threat. If we'd handled Iraq with nothing but special forces and covert ops we could've gotten rid of Saddam and moved on without getting bogged down, and in fact our spec ops guys were doing a great job over there, befriending locals, learning the culture, convincing people they genuinely wanted to help... right up until the other branches decided they wanted a piece of the glory.

Again Maverick seems frighteningly mistaken on the politics of the situation, given his line of work. It is in our interests that Iran knows we are doing this. No matter how much you'd LIKE Iran to be a terrorist cave in the middle of the desert where brown people sit around thinking of ways to give the US a radioactive black eye, Iran is a reasonably stable nation with relatively conventional capabilities and tactics. Cold War-style maneuvering will have some effect on them.

It really says something about this nation when someone from the State Department is so vehemently against transparency. It says something else when that same individual can't articulate that without dropping two F-bombs in a single sentence.

Careful. You don't know it's a leak - and if you do, you can't comment on it publicly. For all we know, Hersh is making it up.

If the Senate and Congress stand around with their collective fingers up their asses and let this moron take us to the brink of yet another war they should all be brought up on criminal charges.

We aren't going to go to war with Iraq. Hersh has been peddling this story for 4 years. It's not going to happen.

Iran, I think you mean to say?

The sh*t we have to tell congress if we do anything covert is told to congress within a time limit, with the understanding that what congress is told is SECRET. If someone is willing to drop a line on funding matters, their a untrustworthy person and that makes me very nervous.

I'm for operational security, you might understand it if you've seen what happens when its blown, but who am I too speak of that, armchair diplomats like yourself have a much better understanding of how operations happen in the real world.

And if you want a sweet articulate conversation, don't bring up a matter that kills more Americans and American assets and allies then most people understand. Anyone whose worked outside the US feels about the same way I do.
You want transparency, fine, get the law changed, but if I ever found out some f*cking aide to a congressman was talking about my groups classified funding or operational material, I'd make sure he wasn't found.

Lots of angry words, no answer to Valerie Plame.

Seriously, you can't come onto an Internet forum and expect the argument that because you work at X, your opinion should trump everyone else's. Example, there's another thread here asking about vicarious liability, which is something I deal with every day and know a good bit about. I explained a little of what I knew about it. Somebody else posts an answer involving a head, an arm, and a knife. People ignore the legally correct answer and discuss the head, arm, and knife. That's how it works. Don't get mad about it.

but if I ever found out some f*cking aide to a congressman was talking about my groups classified funding or operational material, I'd make sure he wasn't found.

It frightens that you work in intelligence, because I'm sure your attitude reflects those of people with both the power and ability to do precisely that.

I don't think you believe Congress is in charge.

I think you already know but I'll respond for the sake of clarity.

Just because we blow up a school or a wedding doesn't mean we're out there trying to blow up schools and weddings. It means someone made a very big mistake. The difference between what we do and what the terrorists do is that we try to kill the bad guy and the terrorists try to kill so many people, regardless of affiliation, that we give up (which isn't to say we should stick around only because it would be doing what the terrorists don't want and that'll learn 'em). It's often very difficult to tell who the bad guy is in the middle of a war zone, especially when the bad guy tries to look like any other shmuck on the street. That's not an excuse to hold people without trial and not an excuse to gun people down in the streets, but it is a reality of the warzone. That in mind, accidents are unforgivable but they can and will happen.

We've invaded another country, Malor. We're trying to kill the people that don't like it, not blow up all their stuff so they're so scared they leave. As they say, never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. We are not waging a terrorist campaign against the Middle East, we are waging an incompetently run and strategically disastrous ground war.

Also, the terrorists do it on a much tighter budget.

I'll agree with you, it is irresponsible for a leak to blow the cover of an important operation. Where do you draw the line between something that's covert because we can't let the enemy know we're doing it and something that's covert because it's embarrassing or incriminating to the administration? By the way, the profanity does not make your argument more compelling, it just makes you seem irrationally angry.