(no subject)

[theweaselking]

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 [biological weapons] 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.

Comments

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

You'd think "Curveball" would have been a bit of a tip-off. It's like having an informant named "Turncoat" or "Rumour".

Oh, wait. I think that last one is an actual CIA informant.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

This is all distracting from the fact that there were credible people saying the opposite or opposing things. For me to give this idiotic report anything more than a split second, I need to have it explained to me why the CIA and FBI and all of these other agencies were put into a vacuum into which no other dissenting opinion made it in. I also need to know why Bush repeatedly used the debriefing done by Hussein Kamel as reason to go to war, but (apparently) neglected to read all the way through where it says things like what came out in the end. I need to know why the ongoing findings of Blix were ignored when he was there on the ground. I need to know why a former Marine and UN weapons inspector named Scott Ritter was summarily dismissed as a quack when he had also been there and also ended up being right. I need to know how I - a retard with a TV, an internet connection, and a nearby bookstore - put this all together when the billion dollar intelligence industry was completely and totally hornswoggled. They want me to believe that this drunken assclown - connected to someone who's wanted for bank fraud, sold US secrets to Iran, and somehow was the leader of the Iraqi exiles despite having not set foot in the country since god knows when - was more credible than the public commentary of professionals actively engaged in the work at hand?

Yeah right.

It's all just a fake show, like everything else this administration does. They got what they wanted, then blamed someone else for the fuckup.