Cosmic Iguana - Voice of the Evil Doers

TODAY IN IRAQ:

"An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 officers and operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency on charges that they seized an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street two years ago and flew him to Egypt for questioning, Italian prosecutors and investigators said Friday. The judge, Chiara Nobili of Milan, signed the arrest warrants on Wednesday for 13 C.I.A. operatives who are suspected of seizing an imam named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, as he walked to his mosque here for noon prayers on Feb. 17, 2003."

This is clearly Berlusconi's payback for the death of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari in Baghdad. The Italian government never believed the US version of that event, so Silvio slipped little George a big hunk of hot, wet pepperoni sausage right between his cheesy cheeks. This is how the intelligence game is played... [*]

This is the result of Bush's eternal "if you are not for us you are against us" strategy. Bush alienated the conservative government of France, and his buddy Putin with the Iraq invasion. He was still friends and Iraq-buddies with Italy, until they started negotiating for their hostage journalist Sgrena who had some dirt on US operations in Fallujah [*]. They decided to bump her off but hit her security guard instead.

But they couldn't apologize (the normal diplomatic route for papering over this kind of thing). They had to cover it up and lie to Italy. THAT's what really pissed Berlusconi off.