Dick Cheney = Keyser Söze

* emptywheel jumps in re Operation Merlin:

"Just coming in at the end of a thread, I think, trying to catch up. But I'll add two comments.

First, I have long thought the blueprints from Obeidi, at least, were likely from Pakistan. It would explain why they were in English, and not Arabic, as Obeidi described them to be. (That's an assumption that English would be more of a lingua franca in Pakistan than in Iraq, of course, but also that you could get stamps in English in Pakistan). As to the other pieces parts, remember that Jerry Doe was fired (effectively) because he had a contact who would sell him the defunct Iraqi centrifuge parts that were available on the black market, and whose source also told him there was no active program.

Also, it would pay not to believe the hype that the AQ Khan network ever got effectively shut down. The only people who ever got jailed are free again (though Khan's still in house arrest). The Pakistanis never once gave us access to Khan. And there have been reports that it is completely functional (don't know whether that means it's back or just never got shut down)."

firstly, i think we arent at the end of this thread yet! EW is probably jumping in early :-)

secondly, i agree with EW, I dont think the Obeidi thing was a part of Merlin.

thirdly, i think that viget was probably getting pretty close in some of his post. I'm not exactly sure which bits. As i mentioned, I suspect that the Bolton stuff makes sense, I'm still trying to get my head around the mechanics of the rest of it.

fourth, i agree with EW that the AQKhan thing is probably still operational - i was trying to put the purported outing of the AQKhan network in the timeline merely to try to understand the context of Merlin and Plame and Iran and Iraq - and to see if these things made some chronological sense.

fifth, it wouldn't surprise me to learn, for example, that Darth Cheney is the real AQKhan (or the Keyser Söze if you'll allow some liberal interpretation). someone (robertpaulson) over at DU makes a pretty good case about this - I havent got time to check the ref right now - but i think it is this (pdf)