Can't trust those kids to make their own decisions

The Iraqis, I mean. Hersh at the New Yorker is back to trouble-making, this time with evidence that the Bush administration tried to influence the outcome of the Iraq elections.

A former senior intelligence official told me, “The election clock was running down, and people were panicking. The polls showed that the Shiites were going to run off with the store. The Administration had to do something. How?”

By then, the men in charge of the C.I.A. were “dying to help out, and make sure the election went the right way,” the recently retired C.I.A. official recalled. It was known inside the intelligence community, he added, that the Iranians and others were providing under-the-table assistance to various factions. The concern, he said, was that “the bad guys would win.”

I'm no big fan of Iranian puppets, but we don't like it when South Americans elect popular socialist leaders, or basically when anybody elects people who don't see things Our Way (even in the US, to judge by GOP shenanigans in 2000 and 2004). Some force for democracy.

(via Follow Me Here)