When will Americans wake up to the costs of the special relationship? When the media and politicians begin to speak about the obvious, that’s when. From Bruce Riedel at the Daily Beast, on the Al Qaeda attack in Afghanistan a year ago that killed 7 CIA officers and a Jordanian intelligence officer:
According to what his wife later told journalists in Jordan, [Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al] Balawi had been deeply affected by Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza during the winter of 2008-2009, and had tried to go to Gaza from Jordan to join Hamas. Unable to get to Gaza, Balawi set out on a new mission: to infiltrate the Jordanian intelligence agency, which he saw as a tool of U.S. and Israeli interests in the region, making his way from Jordan to Pakistan and telling the Jordanians that he had information on the whereabouts of al Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri. In reality, however, Balawi was a triple agent, still working for al Qaeda.
