On June 1, the New York Times ran a column which lauded President Obama for his continuation of President George W. Bush’s “sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.” The Times pointed out that Obama has “significantly expanded” America’s use of cyber-weapons.
And while at first glance, the Times’ column could have been titled “three cheers for Barack Obama,” the careful reader will notice that while the program Bush put in place had continued, Obama’s done his steady best to expose it so that the Iranians can work around it.
No joke.
What’s happening here is that the Times, a paper which undermined the war effort under Bush at every turn in the road, has now managed to run a full story on a “highly classified” operation being conducted under Obama. The story which conveys a brief, but thorough history of the cyber-weapons project to the world (including Iran), but also does so via testimony and input from members of the Obama administration (albeit on conditions of anonymity). The difference between the Times’ work to undercut Bush and their work here is that Bush didn’t want them to do it.
In case any of you are naysayers, consider the column’s report that “an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010.” At that moment, according to the Times, the administration faced a hard decision, as “Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.”
In the end, they decided the program had not been fatally compromised, so they continued with it.
But guess what? It’s been compromised now because every two bit dictator in every rogue state in the world just read about it, thanks to anonymous members of the Obama administration who spilled the beans to the New York Times.
It appears our foreign policy is designed to undermine our foreign policy.
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