At least one high profile war critic sounds alarmed by a recent revelation that Mr. Bush signed a “secret finding” against “the Iranian regime” six weeks ago.  I’m frankly less than agog about it.

In a May 2 CounterPunch article, Andrew Cockburn wrote that Bush has launched a “covert offensive” on Iran that is "unprecedented in its scope."  The “directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan.”  The directive, according to Cockburn, also permits an expanded range of actions, “up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.”

Wow, I thought as I read it.  That’s some scary sounding stuff.  Then, out of habit, I rescanned the piece to note who Cockburn’s sources on the secret finding were, and here’s what I found: “those familiar with its contents.”

Great.  Caesar’s.  Ghost.  Credibility wise, that kind of thing puts Cockburn and CounterPunch on an even footing with Michael R. Gordon and the New York Times.

The recently released report of the Department of Defense Inspector General (I.G.) on the manipulation of pre-Iraq invasion intelligence stinks like a junkyard's worth of burning tires.  

Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story published the two page executive summary of the report on Friday morning.  The summary condemns the now infamous Office of Special Plans (OSP), the neoconservative cabal within the Pentagon that shaped intelligence on Iraq to suit the Bush administration's policy.  But it also lets the OSP off the hook, and tells everybody to look the other way.