US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war - Guardian UK

[rndmprsn]

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

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

Edward Helmore in New York
Sunday April 3, 2005

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.

The Americans never had direct access to Curveball - he was controlled by the German intelligence services who passed his reports on to the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy agency.

[Mari333]

1. Oh..by "drunken Liar" I thought they meant Bush n/t

[Individualist]

2. My first thought as well n/t

[Doctor_J]

3. Exactly

when I saw this headline from Politex, I thought he meant * for sure.

[xultar]

4. 1st thought to cross my mind too. How funny! n/t

[UTUSN]

6. Oh. That OTHER Drunken Liar. n/t

[signmike]

5. Ahh, at long last -- someone specific to blame for all this.

I, too, of course, thought first of *

[riverwalker]

7. repeat and repeat and repeat

until maybe, just maybe, it will filter into the thick skulls of the public, exactly WHY we are in Iraq.

"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."


THIS was the source of Powell's persuasive presentation at the UN, a lying drunk con-man given credibility from another lying drunk, GWB.

[Frederik]

8. It would be hilarious

if it wasn't so tragic.

[BattyDem]

9. Make that TWO drunken liars!

:eyes:

[Al-CIAda]

10. PNAC documents...the LIE of 9/11...

The failure to expose PNAC and the neocons has led to the inability to fight the treason before us. There is more than enough evidence by their own hands to have made the case that a coup has taken place. No silent coup can be sucessful w/o complicitors though, and a few key Dems have sold their souls to the devil. How many times was the PNAC mentioned in the campaign? Its all there, Mein Kampf style.

So the scape goat is this guy eh? Sure, whatever.