Iraq Blame Game
Former US government officials lay blame on "Curveball", an Iraqi engineer who has been seeking asylum in Germany since 1999. He supposedly delivered info on alleged biological weapons labs under Saddam's regime - it was the information Powell presented in front of the UN and key reason for the invasion.
You wonder. Are the foul eggs either bad fact checkers in the CIA or the BND? Or is the finger pointing towards Germany a mix of blame share and conscious dig into the guilt culture of post WW II? Alas, you might find that the whole story was completely fabricated by the real slim shady Mr. Cheney.
"Curveball" told Spiegel: “I am not to blame. I never said that Iraq had weapons for mass destruction. Not at all, not in my entire life.”
It's easier to point fingers towards others, especially towards those who never supported the war in the first place. And stop wining about your own mishaps and start thinking about how to fix todays problems. Go figure, the two biggest cry babies actually lost their job back then: Lawrence Wilkerson and David Kay.
Comments
Rehashing the whole curveballl affair and especially blaming the Germans for the phony intelligence (what is with the Office of Special Plans?) is rather ludicrous and just another step in rewriting history. I'm really tired of all this crap. Just read the interview with former chief of the CIA's Europe division, Tyler Drumheller about Curveball:
SPIEGEL: There are more than a few critics in Washington who claim that the Germans, because of Curveball, bear a large part of the repsonsibility for the intelligence mess.
Drumheller: There was no effort by the Germans to influence anybody from the beginning. Very senior officials in the BND expressed their doubts, that there may be problems with this guy. They were very professional. I know that there are people at the CIA who think the Germans could have set stronger caveats. But nobody says: "Here's a great intel report, but we don't believe it." There were also questions inside the CIA's analytical section, but as it went forward, this information was seized without caveats. The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing, they needed the German stuff. They couldn't go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting.
SPIEGEL: The German government was convinced that "Curveball" would not be used in the now famous presentation that then US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave in 2003 before the United Nations Security Council.
Drumheller: I had assured my German friends that it wouldn't be in the speech. I really thought that I had put it to bed. I had warned the CIA deputy John McLaughlin that this case could be fabricated. The night before the speech, then CIA director George Tenet called me at home. I said: "Hey Boss, be careful with that German report. It's supposed to be taken out. There are a lot of problems with that." He said: "Yeah, yeah. Right. Dont worry about that."
SPIEGEL: But it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell’s presentation -- and nobody had told him about the doubts.
Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech. We checked our files and found out that they had just ignored it.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,462782,00.html
Der Commander; March 21, 2008 5:11 AM