Thread: Conned by CURVEBALL and Administration

This editorial appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal--www.journalnow.com. THIS IS WHERE OUR ADMINISTRATION GOT THE INTELLIGENCE THAT THEY CLAIM CAME FROM INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ALL OVER THE WORLD. This was the basis for what they presented to us as EVIDENCE to take us to war in Iraq.



Conned by 'Curveball'
Winston-Salem Journal
Tuesday, November 22, 2005


It appears that the United States went to war in Iraq based in large part on fantasy stories told by a Baghdad cab driver code-named "Curveball."

German intelligence officers recently told the Los Angeles Times that one of their informants, an Iraqi defector they code-named Curveball, provided information that was central to the Bush administration's justification for going to war against Saddam Hussein. But the German intelligence agency, known as BND, put little credence in Curveball's information and warned the administration that it should be skeptical, also.

Despite those warnings, Curveball's misinformation on Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction found its way into American policy formation. In one of this nation's greatest embarrassments ever at the United Nations, former Secretary of State Colin Powell used Curveball's claims in a pre-war address on Feb. 5, 2003. That is the speech in which Powell told UN members that Saddam had a fleet of mobile laboratories in which his scientists were brewing biological weapons.

The fleet of laboratories was never found, nor were the biological weapons, nor any other weapons of mass destruction. It took the Central Intelligence Agency until May 2004, a full year after "major combat operations" ended, to admit that it had been wrong.

Curveball has been in the news before, but the new revelations about the administration's reliance on his information should make every American shudder.

The Times reported that the CIA embraced Curveball even though the agency could not independently verify any of his claims. "They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability, (and) punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied," the Times said. The CIA didn't even interview Curveball until more than a year after the ground war began. When U.S. interrogators got to Iraq, reliable sources there told them that Curveball was not reliable.

The German authorities who spoke to the Times said Curveball suffered from mental and emotional problems and that his obvious motive for talking to intelligence agents was to gain a visa to live in Germany, where he now lives in hiding.

This story brings new light to the administration's argument with congressional Democrats over pre-war intelligence. Clearly, the officials who built their case for war on Curveball's delusions were looking for any justification for starting a war in Iraq. Administration neo-conservatives, especially in the Department of Defense, were hell- bent on getting rid of Saddam and embraced Curveball.

The American people need a full and fair investigation of both the faulty intelligence used to make the war decision and how it was selected over contradictory evidence that would not have justified war. The bottom line is that the American people need to know how this administration committed American military forces to combat on the basis of such an obvious curveball.

This probably needs to be moved to another thread because I know we have discussed it somewhere but just couldn't find it. It COULD be added to the discussion about Sharon because it brings up the NEOCON agenda.

William or Brian--if you want to move it to a different thread, feel free!