Censored, redacted, Iran's assistance in Afghanistan, NYT op-ed,

[HysteryDiagnosis]

interesting to be sure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22leverett.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The argument that Iran helped America in Afghanistan because it was in Tehran’s interest to get rid of the Taliban is misplaced. Iran could have let America remove the Taliban without getting its own hands dirty, as it remained neutral during the 1991 gulf war. Tehran cooperated with United States efforts in Afghanistan primarily because it wanted a better relationship with Washington.

But Tehran was profoundly disappointed with the United States response. After the 9/11 attacks, xxx xxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xx set the stage for a November 2001 meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s six neighbors and Russia. xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx Iran went along, working with the United States to eliminate the Taliban and establish a post-Taliban political order in Afghanistan.

In December 2001, xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx x Tehran to keep Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the brutal pro-Al Qaeda warlord, from returning to Afghanistan to lead jihadist resistance there. xxxxx xxxxxxx so long as the Bush administration did not criticize it for harboring terrorists. But, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the “axis of evil.” Unsurprisingly, Mr. Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order after the speech. xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx the Islamic Republic could not be seen to be harboring terrorists.

[Greeby]

1. This is impossible to make any sense out of

:crazy:

[Junkdrawer]

2. For those who haven't been following the story....

Video:
http://www.newamerica.net/files/video/naf121806a.asx

More info here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2941584

[Junkdrawer]

3. Here's Mr. Leverett's intro to the redacted op-ed:

What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran


By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN
Published: December 22, 2006
Washington

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves. (See links at left.)

The decisions of the C.I.A. and the White House took us by surprise. Since leaving government service three and a half years ago, Mr. Leverett has put more than 20 articles through the C.I.A.’s prepublication review process and the Publication Review Board has never changed a word or asked the White House for permission to clear these articles.

....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22precede.html

[Poiuyt]

4. De-coded at Rawstory

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/The_redacted_Iran_oped_revealed_1222.html

[dave_p]

5. Filling in the gaps

These may help fill in the gaps: Leverett's December 19 paper and March http://www.cfr.org/publication/10326/">interview.

The dealings around Hekmatyar's stay in Iran seem to have gotten the White House flustered, and the first five-line redacted chunk presumably relates to Iranian cooperation with the US over the 2001 Bonn conference deal on an Afghan provisional government. That would seem to leave the wholly-redacted paragraph to cover Iran's 2003 "grand bargain" offer and its rejection by the US, which Leverett's described elsewhere.

So why did the White House insist on the cuts when the CIA had approved the text? Presumably because the missing text related to policy rather than intelligence. From the position of the edits, it looks that way.

[Junkdrawer]

6. A worthy thread...

:kick:

[JNelson6563]

7. Carl Levin once brought some redacted documents

(recently released) to an event here in MI to bring us up to date, I forget specifically which Team Bush horror these documents pertained to. Anyhow, he shows us the pages of the report and several pages had every single line blacked out. Not one word left uncovered. You should have seen Carl. Infuriated almost begins to cover it. You can be sure that the minute the Dems take control in January he will be on Team Bush's back like no one else.

:toast:

Julie