Yesterday, the Iraqi government announced its intention to expel the anti-Iranian Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) from Iraq:

“The Iraqi government is responsible for their security and it continues to implement its plans to shut down the camp and to either deport its population to their country or to a third country,” it said in a statement after the visit led by Iraqi national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.

“Remaining in Iraq is not an option for them,” the statement added.

The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), is the largest and most militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

MEK was founded in the 1960s by a group of college-educated Iranian leftists opposed to the country’s pro-Western ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Although the group took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution that replaced the shah with a Shiite Islamist regime, MEK’s ideology, a blend of Marxism and Islamism, put it at odds with the post-revolutionary government. In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against Khomeini’s Iran. In 1986, MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq where it received its primary support to attack the regime in Iran.

While it’s now understood that, despite the Bush administration’s claims, Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have any significant relationship with Al Qaeda, Saddam did have relationships with other terrorist organizations, one of which was the MEK. In addition to receiving financial, logistical and material support from from Saddam to carry out attacks inside Iran, “MEK forces also assisted the Iraq regime in the repression of Kurds and other minorities in northern Iraq.”

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sec. Donald Rumsfeld declared the MEK “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which is to say that a designated terrorist group known to have carried out attacks that killed Americans enjoyed greater legal protections than your average Iraqi picked up after curfew. The decision to protect the MEK — possibly for the purpose of carrying out future attacks against Iran — also revealed one of the underlying premises of the U.S. war on terror — the idea that we would make “no distinction” between terrorists and those who harbor them — to be just empty rhetoric.

This was not lost on Iran. Understandably irritated by the U.S.’s sheltering and protecting an anti-Iranian terrorist organization, the Iranian government has long demanded that the U.S. disband the MEK and and repatriate its members. (In 1981, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali al-Khamenei, who was then the president, survived an MEK bomb attack in which he lost the use of his right arm.) Now it seems they may get their wish.

Interestingly, the Iraqi government’s announcement was made just days before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is due to visit Tehran. Clearly, the decision to grant one of Tehran’s dearest requests and expel a US-allied, anti-Iranian terrorist organization represents another huge blow to the theory that Tehran enjoys influence in the Iraqi government.

In an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace yesterday morning, Vice President Cheney defended the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, and claimed that the congressional leaders briefed on the program wholeheartedly approved. In fact, Cheney claimed, when the White House asked if it needed congressional approval for the program, they unanimously agreed it did not:

CHENEY: We briefed them on the program and what we’d achieved and how it worked and asked them should we continue the program. They were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike. All agreed: Absolutely essential to continue the program. I then said, Do we need to come to the Congress and get additional legislating authorization to continue what we’re doing? They said absolutely not. Don’t do it.

Watch it:

Cheney’s startling claims run directly counter to accounts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Rather than asking for congressional input, Pelosi and Rockefeller said in 2005 that Cheney simply informed them of what was going on — and ignored their objections:

PELOSI: The Bush Administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval. As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings.

ROCKEFELLER: The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program.

Other congressional members who attended those briefings have said that they were told only the barest outlines of the program. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jane Harman (D-CA) said that the White House never disclosed that it was skirting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) said the same thing:

The assumption was that if we did that, we would do it pursuant to the law, the law that regulates the surveillance of national security issues. And there was no suggestion that we were going to begin eavesdropping on United States citizens without following the full law. … There was no reference made to the fact that we were going to use that as the subterfuge to begin unwarranted, illegal — and I think unconstitutional — eavesdropping on American citizens.

What’s more, Rockefeller, then vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote a hand-written letter to Cheney in 2003 to “reiterate [his] concerns” about the wiretapping program. “I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities,” he wrote.

Cheney claims to have suggested seeking congressional approval right away. However, the White House put up a stiff fight just a few years later, when Congress finally sought to impose oversight of the wiretapping program. The Vice President has already presented misleading information about the dates and frequency of these supposed briefings; now he appears to be offering misleading descriptions of them.