New Bob Woodward Book: US Spied On Iraqi Leaders

The Bush administration has conducted an extensive spying operation on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his staff and others in the Iraqi government, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward.

"We know everything he says," according to one of multiple sources Woodward cites about the practice in "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008," scheduled for release Monday.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[wittgene]

Hey Democrats, I have a little info for you all. If the Demcrats win the White House, the Bush Administration will hand out pardons, like shots at college spring break party. eg. Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

[robeson]

You can't pardon someone not tried.

[PatCroft]

Inside this article it is about the Surge

The real story in this article and Woodwards book is that the Surge is not responsible for anything that it is being made to be within the McCain camp and even in the recent O'Riely vs Obama interview, and the Bush Administration.

Hence Read the Article and then go to the O'Reily / Obama interview clip. And get the word out.

Barrack has always opposed the Surge. McCain has staked his political career supporting the surge. This story qualifies that Barrack was right all along.

[Y2KCockroach]

This is not a surprise to me, it should not be a surprise to you, and I doubt that it is anything of a surprise to the Iraqis. The only surprise is that perhaps Maliki is not as compliant a puppet as the Bushies had hoped; time will tell. In any event, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was not built on a budget of almost three quarters of a BILLION dollars for the purpose of vetting visas and handling tourist requests. It is the largest listening post that the U.S. State Department has in the world. It is a building full of spies, whose jobs are to watch, record, track, and report on anything and everything that moves in the Middle East. I will be mildly surprised if that building is still standing in five years.

[timetorevolt]

I guess this is his redemption book. He kissed W's a__ and help to sell the WMD story . I will not spend a penny on his book.

Let the right buy his book.. Never mind..most of them can't read.

[darthdarcy]

So that means they know where the $20,000,000,000.00 unaccounted for went missing, an who took it I gather..?

Terrific, let's go get it back..!

[BluesDogLefty]

Of course, spying on people you are about to liberate is normal.

I cannot wait until Bush is back in TX.

Obama/Biden '08

[glesslib]

Well, I, for one, am shocked, just shocked. That we would spy on our allies is not altogether unbelievable in light of the fact that for the past 6 years, at least, this pack of Fascists have spied on its own citizens. Of course, we all know that their spying on citizens and allies is stricly for our own good and the good of the country. What other reason could they have, unless it would be to control any type of opposition to the Bush/Cheney policies? And old John agreed with them 90 percent of the time.

[the964kid]

They're spying on US Citizens without warrants so of course they're spying on the Iraqis too!

[MagisterLudi]

U.S. spied on Iraqi leader? Good.Shouldn't the Western Intelligences we know what they're doing?! I hope they shared high quality intel with allies like UK, France and Israel. Bush admin committed any crimes, but this is NOT one of them.

[ajax2]

Bob Woodward, the man who sat in on the GW Bush WH and missed every single criminal activity, is back.

[Mike169]

Funny - if they were as concerned with the phony information coming from Chalabi...really could these guys be any more screwed up than they are already?

[LiarLiarIraqsOnFire]

Spying on foreign leaders & countries isn't illegal - spying on American Citizens IS!

[owiseone]

All of our own Congress is probably spied upon as well.

[omahkohkiaayo]

Bush was long ago warned to avoid paper trails and putting anything in writing that could be used by prosecutors in the present or historians in the future. Plato said it long ago: "Those who seek power are invariably the least fit to hold and wield it." It takes a certain amount of outright narcissism and megalomania to seek over others--arbitrary and capricious power--what no one wants others to have over him or her. But the problem is how to control how you will be viewed by history after one's demise: it is the "Labor of Sisyphus." That is why these types build huge edifices to their monstrous egos--presidential libraries etc--to try to control history and what is written about it well into the future.

But the spying works both ways. Does anyone think the Iraqis, supposedly a "sovereign" state, that has demanded timelines for U.S. troop withdrawals, do not have their own tape recordings of their meetings with Bush principals and what was being said and demanded of them? That is how blackmail works: the blackmailer becomes the blackmailed just as the occupiers who "hold" territory wind up being held and bound by the very territory they purport to hold--ask the Israelis.

[ProfessorDuh]

Well, of course. They spy on everybody, with special emphasis on innocent Americans citizens.