Exactly. Not only is this article from 2013, but other unnamed sources had told the big newspapers about this many years before that. Russia is simultaneously claiming that there were no chemical weapons used in Syria while pointing to Reagan helping Iraq when it used chemical weapons against Iran. The Soviet Union also supported Iraq in that war.
It doesn't work because anybody with a conscience can tell you that Reagan was wrong then, just as Putin is wrong now.
> It doesn't work because anybody with a conscience can tell you that Reagan was wrong then, just as Putin is wrong now.
They seem like part of a larger attack against western intelligence, and if you don't pay attention to the details I can understand why it comes off as damning.
It's easy to pretend that the CIA is some puppet master, but their job is intelligence. The intelligence agencies, analysts/strategists, and the decision makers aren't the same apparatus in the US.
Look at the later claims of WMD that were the pretense for war, there's plenty of evidence to show that the CIA wasn't making the claim that they had WMD. They made the claim that they didn't know. It was members of the Bush administration (policymakers) that were pushing the narrative.
But if you happen to be a nation state doing something damning it's convenient to blur the mistakes of the policymakers with the intelligence community to discredit the intelligence that's calling you out.
My guess as to why it's on the front page right now is because of Syria. It's called whataboutism.