Saddam's mobile germ labs? ‘Curveball’ sais he made it all up.

Remove all ads!

Some may still remember (while others probably preferred to forget about him asap) 'Curveball', the infamous Iraqi defector. To recap: He was about the most important informant on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction program. It was from him that the claim came that Hussein was moving biochemical weapons from place to place with mobile labs - these things, as used by Colin Powell in his equally infamous UN presentation:

. ​

He was fished up by German intelligence who also did the debriefing. The German intelligence service had doubts about his reliability, and warned their US counterparts about him, and that they couldn't verify his claims. To no avail - his claims were prominently used by the Bush administration in run-up to the Iraq war.

Well, as time passes, among other things, defectors can give public interviews. Like this one, in which ‘Curveball’ admitted that he lied about Saddam's WMD.

Yes, shocked, just shocked. The poor thing.

​

 

There is nothing quite like telling people what they want to hear:

Of course. Why ruin a perfectly good story with the facts.

He should be in prison.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/16/curveball-rafid-ahmed-alw_n_824175.html

 

I don't think so. He told a story. The ones who bought it ought to be in jail. The ones who said they were "certain" Saddam had WMD's based (largely) on this man's word, and either a) didn't bother to substantiate his claims, or b) didn't care if they were true or not, because they were going to war regardless, and he just provided the cassus beli they were looking for.

But this guy? I could care less if he serves a day.

 

It irks me that he used American lives to get what he wanted. Can he explain this to the fathers and mothers who lost sons and daughters based, at least in part, on his lies? I wouldn't want to face them if I were him.

 

DR,
he is a fraud. He should not have been rewarded for that. Iirc is is one of the guys 'produced' (read: recruited, prepped and sent on his way) by Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, another fraud. It irks me that Curveball received German financial support till 2008, I presume based on a mutual US-German agreement.

Point is, the neo-cons wanted to attack Iraq anyway. They didn't need Curveball, but his scaaaaary story served them just fine. Since the info from him was unsubstantiated, it counts as raw intelligence. That was what the infamous Office of Special plans was all about - to scour raw intelligence to find stuff to support the propaganda case for war against Iraq i.e. to make politically feasible what was found desirable in the Grand Strategic schemes and other Grandiose visions permeating in neo-cons minds - of revolutionary change sweeping the Greater Middle East, naturally in the tail of US armoured brigades conducting an RMA fuelled blitzkrieg from Baghdad over Damascus to Beirut and then to Tehran. Obviously, very realistic and modest goals. It had nothing to do with intelligence. It also had nothing to do with threats posed to the US. It was about making the Middle East safe for Israel, and as a side effect, establishing US global pre-eminence. Now that spectacularly failed. The plan actually died dead in its tracks right in the quicksands of Iraq.

Curveball's attitude vis a vis truth is virtually indistinguishable from that of Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi told London's Daily Telegraph in February 2004, "We are heroes in error. As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important." Indeed?

Or take Richard Perle who I recall speaking along the lines of: "WMD? We are still waiting for this evidence. But like I also said, WMD or no WMD, we did the right thing." Oh yes?

The US population at large has no idea about the extent of devastation the US war on Iraq has caused in Iraq.

Spoiler

Iraq reappraisals are back in vogue. They favor the drawing of balance sheets. They leave something missing – something of paramount importance. That is the effects on Iraqis themselves. Not Iraqis in the abstract, not as figures in a statistical category of sects. Rather, as flesh and blood and feeling persons. Frankly, most of the discourse about Iraq from day one has had a disengaged quality to it. That is the norm for dominant powers on the world stage; and for the seminar strategist. That was not always the norm by which Americans referenced war and violence abroad in the 20th century when we truly believed in our proclaimed ideals.

To illuminate the point, here are some too readily slighted facts. 100,000 – 150,00 Iraqis are dead as the consequence of our invasion and occupation. That is the conservative estimate. Untold thousands are maimed and orphaned. 2 million are uprooted refugees in neighboring lands. Another 2 million are displaced persons internally. The availability of potable water and electricity is less than it was in February 2003. The comparable numbers for the United States would be 1.1 – 1.6 million dead; an equal number infirmed; 22 million refugees in Mexico and Canada; 22 million displaced persons within the country. We did not do all the killing and maiming; we did most of the destruction of infrastructure. To all these tragedies we are accessories before and during the fact.

Digits make less of an impact on us than observed reality. That is always the case. And very few have been in a position to see the human effects of our actions first hand. So let me suggest a couple of ways to approximate that experience. Go to your nearest cemetery; read and count the tombstones up to ten. Do that ten times, then multiply by a thousand. Try visualizing only half that number since it is in the nature of all of us to diminish drastically the affect and identity for those who are not part of our community. Step two: go to RFK stadium, imagine it full. Do that 3 times and then imagine them all – men, women and children - in their graves. Imagine. Imagine them hobbling on one leg, lying crippled or maimed on a cot in a cinderblock house. Imagine them as Americans – men, women and children – who placed USA stickers on their cars, hoisted the Stars & Stripes on holidays, lustily sang the national anthem. Imagine them all as the victims of an invasion and occupation by Iraqi Muslims who were deceived by their lying leaders who had their own dark purposes. An occupation that featured the likes of L. Mahmoud Chalebi IV and Bashi Bazouks of the Blackwater ilk. Imagine that these altruistic Iranians leave behind a Vice-Regal Embassy on the banks of the Potomac, giant airbases scattered around the country, and 550,000 troops (proportional) – all out of concern for our health and safety. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Imagine your counterparts in Baghdad now drawing up balance sheets.

Next Step: go back to the study and reconstruct your Iraq balance sheet.

But there you have smug frauds like Perle, Chalabi and Curveball say: It doesn't matter what we said. We wanted Saddam gone, and he is gone. When we lied, it was a little white lie that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Disgusting. And don't get me started about the likes of Bush and Cheney.

 

I understand he is a fraud. I don't care. The world is full of frauds. Ahmed Chalabi is just as bad. But I still don't care. I care about the people in our government who thought so highly of these fools that they sat Chalabi behind the first lady during the State of the Union and waged a war - arguably the single most important, most serious action a government can take - based all or in part on their (now obviously dubious) word. They had a far, far greater responsibility and duty than Chalabi or Curvy-balls.

If I walked into congress and said "I know how to solve the debt crisis: there's a trillion dollars lodged in George Clooney's ass," and based on that the government detained poor Mr. Clooney and performed a hasty and fruitless excavation of his colon cavity (killing him in the process), who is the bigger jerk? Me for telling a bullsh*t, self-serving story the government wanted to hear, or the government for acting so rashly and destructively on that story without doing an ounce of due dilligance?

No George Clooneys were harmed in the making of this analogy.

 

I love that THAT'S the part you balk at, not how a trillion dollars got into his ass.

(I realize now that I didn't work in why I wanted Clooney dead into the analogy, but you get the idea. Having seen the ladies Clooney bags, I guess that's as good a motivator as any).

 

I think there's enough room in the world's jails to house both this Curveball wanker and the "intelligence" officers who ran with his BS data. And maybe even Bush and Cheney.

Heck, if DR is right, there's plenty of room to do that housing right up George Clooney's ass!

 

LKD,
the folks pushing his **** weren't intelligence officers. They were propagandists.

 

He was a very small part of it. There were clearly senior Americans who knew his story was dodgy but were happy to push it for their own ends. I'd direct my anger at them.

 

Most anyone who has read my posts regarding the Iraq War over the last 7-8 years on this forum, knows that I have plenty of anger to go around towards ALL these "fellows."

 

Yup, Curveball's smugness is merely adding insult to injury. He is simply a reminder that the likes of Perle and Wolfowitz, for whom Curveball was a useful pawn, are those who instigated the war in Iraq and are responsible for the carnage the US invasion triggered. In my country promoting and preparing war of aggression is a crime (I think rightly so) while neo-cons call it statecraft.

Also, next time some exile tells you a tall story, double check it because they have their own agendas.

For instance most of the Iranian exiles I meet tend to be fans of the Shah. If the stories are to be believed, he was just awesome (never mind his abysmal human rights record), and the Iranian people is ready to overthrow the Ayatollahs with just a bit of western help - and those people who voted for Ahmedinejad and the religious conservatives, if they voted at all, they don't matter, they are just hill billies. If you build a policy on such advice, goodnight.

Likewise I met a Turk yesterday lecturing me about the truth behind the revolution in Egypt. It was the US, it must have been the US, and the Muslim brotherhood, because they can do everything because they have all the money. Referred to the fall of the Iron curtain, and how it was not masterminded, she then said, that, too, was the US. No comment.

Exiles or immigrants can tell you a lot of crap on a long day. Only an idiot takes what they say at face value.

 

Clearly the Bush administration screwed up, they should have water boarded him to get the truth.

 

What part about torture being a crime is it that you do not understand?

And then: There was no screw up. Yes, the post-war thing wsn't planned and all that (didn't they have Ahmed Chalabi for that? Why didn't he get a presidential Medal of Freedom for producing folks like Curveball?) - but the war? Went according to plan.

This was fully intentional. They didn't care whether what he or they said was true. They want to go after Iraq - period. Curveball just came in handy at the time. You probably still underestimate for one thing Bush's determination to go after Iraq and find a reason, any reason, and then the you underestimate neo-cons fervour (and undeniable bureaucratic skill) in pushing for the war.

For all those folks who still think the war was about oil or money

It was about ideology. Global Benevolent Hegemony™, an unshakable belief in themselves and American omnipotence aside - the neo-cons really believe that political science crap about revolutionary change and transforming societies, that, in Tom Friedman's words, the world is flat' (i.e. that in every Arab or Asian there is a little American wanting to get out). They really do. They are that dumb.

 

Torture fails to humour me and my humour fails me on torture.

It's a zero tolerance issue for me. But I see your point.