American Operations in Iran, Legal Aspects.

Well A few weeks ago the Iranians claimed to have caught a few spies [read “Iran and Nukes” further below] and I’m sure some people in the States chuckled. But the latest news have reinforced their claim.
New Yorker Magazine ‘investigator’ Seymour Hersh has written an extensive article at www.newyorker.com in which he lays out, briefly, the bits and pieces of ‘evidence’, most of it anonymous, that he has collected.
I thoroughly recommend reading that article and there is no need for me to repeat what you’ll read there.
I have found that the legal details were the most interesting. In order to ensure that the operations do not get into any legal trouble, they are ran by the army and not the CIA.
President Bush is essentially making the CIA less and less relevant, and perhaps some will say, this is normal: It’s an Intelligence Agency, not an Action Agency. But that’s missing the point.
The reason why this legal aspect is interesting is because lawfulness is what defines history, essentially. And when the law is successfully bent, though we may remember it now, in just a few decades, people will barely recall. They will merely remember the event that unfolded.
In ancient times, when two princes quarreled over the throne, they couldn’t openly kill each other. One of them needed an elaborate and legal-ish plan to get rid of the other, to avoid accusations of being a throne thief for ever. When the United States organized the 1953 coup against Iranian prime minister Mossadegh, they were extremely concerned with getting the Shah to sign some mock-official documents officially dismissing Mossadegh (even though the Shah had no such actual power). And of course, more recently when the US launched their war on Iraq, they obviously wanted the world, through the UN, to approve and thus legalize their war.
Of course, might you say, everyone wants to be one the right side of the law. Yes indeed, everyone does. But when this desire comes from an entity which has the power to twist the law as it pleases, in the process, it makes a mockery of the law. The UN became significant when it refused poor Powell’s power point lies. That day, the law stood firm. And this war went down as an illegal war.
Compare the Iraqi campaign’s aura with Afghanistan’s aura. Sure, the Afghans are still miserably unsafe and prone to poppy farming. But in fact, the world agreed on removing the Taliban, and that campaign was ‘legal’. The reason why things are not well there is completely unrelated and different (the west failed to keep its promises, and it’s one messed up country anyway).
Similar things could be said of the patriot act and of these infiltrations in Iran. Legal does not necessarily mean good. And these latest news will only benefit extremists in the Arab world and in the streets of Tehran.