US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war (besides * that is)

[G_j]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1451138,00.html

US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war

'Crazy' Iraqi spy was full of misinformation, says report

Edward Helmore in New York
Sunday April 3, 2005
The Observer

An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.
According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar' by his friends.

The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball's credibility, his claims were included in the administration's case for war without caveat.

According to the report, the failure of US spy agencies to scrutinise his claims are the 'primary reason' that they 'fundamentally misjudged the status of Iraq's programs'. The catalogue of failures and the gullibility of US intelligence make for darkly comic reading, even by the standards of failure detailed in previous investigations. Of all the disproven pre-war weapons claims, from aluminium centrifuge tubes to yellow cake uranium from Niger, none points to greater levels of incompetence than those found within the misadventures of Curveball.

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040205B.shtml

Curveball the Source of Fresh CIA Rancor
By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller
The Los Angeles Times

Saturday 02 April 2005

Washington - A bitter feud erupted Friday over claims by a presidential commission that top CIA officials apparently ignored warnings in late 2002 and early 2003 that an informant code-named "Curveball" - the chief source of prewar US intelligence about Iraqi germ weapons - was unreliable.

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet and his chief deputy, John E. McLaughlin, furiously denied that they had been told not to trust Curveball, an Iraqi refugee in Germany who ultimately was proved a fraud.

But the CIA's former operations chief and one of his top lieutenants insisted in interviews that debates had raged inside the CIA about Curveball's credibility, even as then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vouched for the defector's claims in a crucial address to the United Nations Security Council on the eve of war.

"The fact is there was yelling and screaming about this guy," said James L. Pavitt, deputy director of operations and head of the clandestine service until he retired last summer.

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"They can say whatever they want," Drumheller said. "They know what the truth is ... I did not lie." Drumheller said the CIA had "lots of documentation" to show suspicions about Curveball were disseminated widely within the CIA. He said they included warnings to McLaughlin's office and to the Weapons Intelligence Non Proliferation and Arms Control Center, known as WINPAC, the group responsible for many of the flawed prewar assessments on Iraq.

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[acmavm]

1. No No No No No. The intelligence agencies did not rely on a drunken

liar. The OSP, the special created 'intelligence' agency of the bush** boys and girls USED THE DRUNKEN LIAR as justification for the illegal attack on a sovereign nation who was not threat to us.

This is just so bizarre. I have to quit reading these threads. The make me feel like I'm in some kind of alternative universe. What the fuck is wrong with these media sources? Do they think everyone has collective amnesia and this shit is going to fly???????