What else is the Bush administration doing?

The most troubling thing about The New Yorker magazine revelation that the Bush administration secretly got Congress to approve $400 million to increase covert operations against Iran's government is not that it was done in secret. A lot of things, particularly involving espionage, get done in secret. No, the worst thing is that this is an escalation of efforts that have already been going on for months without the public's knowledge, and probably indicates that more untoward things are going on as well. The Reuters international news service reported today that, according to the magazine's Web site, operations conducted in the past year by U.S. Special Forces have included kidnapping members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and taking them to Iraq for interrogation (at Abu Ghraib?), and killing or capturing other suspects in the war on terror. The article, "Preparing the Battlefield -- The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran" by Seymour Hersh, is published in the magazine's July 7 and July 14 issue. The U.S. government is leading a worldwide effort to pressure Iran to give up its effort to enrich uranium, which Iran claims it needs to generate electricity but which Israel and other western nations believe is intended for nuclear weapons development. But a clandestine effort to undermine Iran's government? No wonder Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, always seems so pissed at us.