Laura Rozen’s article in The American Prospect provides more info about the Italian connection where the forged yellowcake documents were tracked to. But, despite the eye-opener about it being shovelled directly to the White House through Hadley, it raises more questions than it answers.

The usual clarity of Billmon on this story is lacking, as he mulls ideas but can’t find a definitive answer. But Josh Marshall, who had the inside track to the story 2 years ago, adds a logical explanation: Italian intelligence always muddies fresh details with disinformation precisely to keep the full truth hidden.

To further our understanding, Josh adds more here and on the timing of Cheney’s knowledge vs. his disinfohere. Then he relates a translation of the Italian story , more here and here here and especially here. With more promised for today.

Still clear as mud? Even as Marshall assembles the puzzle pieces, we can only see the outline as yet.

From a discredited Iranian, and Italian intelligence (with Italy interests in both maintaining trade ties to Iran and in gaining favor with Bush) and a neocon who was pushing the neocon ideals of taking down Hussein (what good is superpower staus if its superpowers aren’t used aggressively to compel its greater interests) and spreading democracy by force, the fake documents arose. The Bush administration, in pursuit of its neocon agenda, kept fighting against CIA analysis of the documents as fakes, trying to find a way to utilize them to make their case for invading Iraq. So not only did the White House cherrypick only the info that supported the actions they were adamant about taking, but they did so with full knowledge that their own most experienced intel agency (the CIA) was interpreting the info 180 degrees differently. And thereafter, both through careful parsing of words and government investigations in Washington and London, the administrations of Bush and Blair succeeded in keeping the disputes in the analyses from being widely known to their publics.

Okay. But who exactly created the fake documents and why?

Still, that’s the great unknown. Despite Billmon’s speculations and Josh’s added details, those answers remain elusive.

The different tack I propose is to first review who might have motives to take out Saddam, and see what can be built from there:

- Iraq’s Shias and Kurds, to gain security, safety and economic freedoms

- the neocons, to advance an ideological agenda

- the Italians, to gain favor with Bush (who had bought the neocon agenda) so they could continue their trade with Iran.

- Iran, because the toppling of Hussein would lead to a more closely allied country due to its overwhelmingly Shia majority.

- anyone - governments, corporations and individuals - who could profit from the certain speculation and profits in oil and defense industries.

- anyone previously attacked by Saddam who simply sought revenge, which includes Iran, the Shias, the Kurds, the Kuwaitis, and Israel.

- likewise, anyone feeling threatened by Saddam, which could include that last group, plus Saudi Arabia.

That’s a lot of folks with motives, though long experience with politics has taught me that mysterious political actions almost always have a monetary rationale at its roots. Further, as most of Iraq’s neighbors are Sunnis, they might not trust Saddam, but neither would they like a Shia majority taking over. Which takes some edge off the motives the Saudis and Kuwaitis might harbor.

But we see clear evidence of the direct involvement of an Iranian, a neocon and the Italian government in utilizing the forged documents to assure Saddam will be felled. We’ve also seen the oil industry, defense industries and reconstruction companies like Halliburton directly benefiting from the outcome. And countries across the OPEC spectrum, plus Russia, have benefited most from the oil profit gains. So there’s plenty of folks who’ve gained from the invasion of Iraq, too many to see just one as the principal mover that created the forgeries.

There have been claims that Israel’s Mossad has been active behind the scenes with the Kurds to spy on Iran, but this would suggest that Israel feared Iran as much as Iraq and the resulting change in governments would not produce a net gain for their interests - unless the Israelis believed we’d maintain power over the new Iraq government long after the toppling of Saddam.

But among the many parties with a motive to take out Saddam, the only ones not motivated clearly by monetary gain are the Israelis, so I’d rank them at the bottom of the list. But so many parties remain whose monetary interests improved that - even though they may not have created the forged documents - they were quickly supportive of the Bush initiative because their motives coincided.

Which leads us back to nowhere definitive.

Because of Colin Powell’s chief of staff’s recent charge that the Cheney-Rumsfeld ‘cabal’ held sway over such foreign policy choices, and my long mentioned views about that unholy pair’s involvement in the foreign policies of several administrations dating back to Nixon (and the Bush family makes it a triumvirate), plus the cronyism apparent between Cheney and Halliburton, and many administration officials with oil interests, it still leans more towards an oil/neocon cabal as the most likely source of the forgeries, though exactly who asked who to do the dirty deed isn’t known.

It helps to consider that this administration still utilized - or tried to - old hands involved in the Iran Contra scandal, like Poindexter, Abrams and others. And Gorbanifar (the discredited Iranian) and Chalabi (the discredited ultra wealthy Iraqi) were utilized despite the CIA considering both to be unreliable.

My best guess indicates that the neocons and industry execs, with Cheney and Rumsfeld directing, had the most to gain from toppling Saddam. And that they utilized Italian intelligence to cover up the tracks leading back to their instigation. There is no clear evidence who exactly manufactured the forgeries. But there’s plenty of neocon fingerprints evident to make this, at least, a logical best guess that the root culprits weren’t the forgers but the guys who ordered the forgers to ply their trade.

And since the hallmark of this administration’s foreign policy has been ineptitude in the planning and execution, it stands to reason that even the forgeries would be badly made. There’s a symmetry of interlocking incompetence in all of this that shouldn’t be too easily dismissed.

Of course, that hardly proves my suppositions correct. But it does provide a fair rationale for the direction investigators should dig in. Maybe we’ll never have the full truth of this matter. But I believe if it leads to the cabal, the truth will emerge eventually. If the instigator was Italy, Israel or Iran, we may never get the full story.

Update: Even as the results of the special prosecutor’s work become known, who specifically gets indicted will not much matter when weighed against all the evidence already available, that Cheney, Rove and Libby lied as part of the coverup game. And if they believed the original acts were legal, would they lie to a special prosecutor just to limit political damage? Not likely.

So it’s a gimme that they lied publicly. What needs to be confirmed is whether they lied to Fitzgerald. So perjury is itself a pretty strong case that they believed the original action of outing Valerie Plame was a violation of the law.

Leaks suggest they all did lie, but since Cheney was likely NOT under oath, and has a history of carefully parsing his words, I remain skeptical that he can be indicted, though again, he can certainly be condemned by an angry public, which could still see him out the door.