Pentagon agency confuses Iran with Iraq in official history

"George W. Bush is not stupid," Jon Stewart told a crowd in 2005. "He invaded Iraq. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Qaeda ... but Iran does. So he was only one letter off and that should be credited."

The Agency that brought you bogus intelligence on the Iraq war -- a Defense Intelligence Agency operative who knew that a key US intelligence source was unreliable sat in on meetings with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell when he incorporated claims about mobile Iraqi weapons labs into his portfolio -- now brings you the Iran that is actually Iraq.

In a brief official history of their own agency, posted on their website (pdf here), the DIA confused Iran and Iraq.

Noting "world crises" in the 1980s, the agency's report cites “an Israeli F-16 raid to destroy an Iranian nuclear reactor.” (See page 14)

The discrepancy was first caught by the Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood, who writes the blog Secrecy News.

In fact, Israel attacked an Iraqi nuclear reactor -- Osirak -- in 1981. Israel has not attacked Iranian nuclear sites -- or at least, not yet.

“The description appears to match Israel’s raid on Iraq’s [Osirak] nuclear reactor” in 1981, Israeli scholar Gideon Remez told Aftergood on his blog. “Today’s preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program seems to have been projected onto the events of 27 years ago.” Raw Story