A US Senate Committee has just released a very interesting report on the pre-war intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMD provided by the Iraqi National Congress.
The report by the committee specifically criticized a decision by the National Security Council
in 2002 to maintain a close relationship with the Iraqi National
Congress, headed by the exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, even after the
C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency had warned that “the I.N.C was penetrated by hostile intelligence services,” notably Iran. (New York Times)
The whole episode is a remarkably apt illustration of Machavelli’s warning in the Discourses on Livy, How Dangerous it is to Believe Exiles:
It
ought to be considered, therefore, how vain are the faith and promises of those
who find themselves deprived of their country. For, as to their faith, it has
to be borne in mind that anytime they can return to their country by other
means than yours, they will leave you and look to the other, notwithstanding
whatever promises they had made you. As to their vain hopes and promises, such
is the extreme desire in them to return home, that they naturally believe many
things that are false and add many others by art, so that between those they
believe and those they say they believe, they fill you with hope, so that
relying on them you will incur expenses in vain, or you undertake an enterprise
in which you ruin yourself. (Chapter 31, Discourses on Livy)
I suppose the neocons never got past The Prince.
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