Tag: Curveball

Mar 14 2011

CBS 60min.: “Curve Ball”


eighth anniversary of America’s invasion of Iraq.

Yep, and it seems now that the U.S. media is trying to spin their own rovian revisionist history as to why they didn’t do their jobs, eight years later!


And after all this time, questions still remain as to why the United States launched the war in the first place.

Really Simon, questions? Seems hundreds of thousands here with added millions, us ‘focus groups’, around this planet were questioning before, on the day the invasion started and all these years later, as well as paying attention to the better late then never Inquiries held as well as all the proof then and through these eight years. Where have all of you been?


So how did U.S. intelligence get it so wrong?

Did intelligence get it all wrong “who spun a web of lies which convinced America’s top spies”, or is it more reality that you all followed breathlessly what cheney and all his brother and sister neo-cons, who found a story line from a single source they could build up with what other ‘intelligence?’ they cherry picked, think powell at the U.N., and added to justify their destructive goals, sold you and few questioned, remember all that love towards rumsfeld!

Jul 20 2010

Secrets and Surprises

vietnam-veterans-memorial-8

From the New York Times, July 14, 2010…

“If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great,” Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, the father of the future vice president, said in March 1968 in a closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee.

And yes indeed, the country had been misled, but there were no consequences for any of the liars who lied us into Vietnam.

At another point, the committee’s chairman, Senator William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, raised concerns that if the senators did not take a stand on the war, “We are just a useless appendix on the governmental structure.”

And thirty years later, in 2001 and 2003, that same “useless appendix,” the United States Senate, was once again stampeded into endorsing useless wars based on nothing but lies.

Even at the time, there was widespread skepticism about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the North Vietnamese were said to have attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after an earlier clash.

In the end, however, the senators did not further pursue their doubts. As Mr. Church said in one session that was focused on the staff report into the episode, if the committee came up with proof that an attack never occurred, “we have a case that will discredit the military in the United States, and discredit and quite possibly destroy the president.”

“We have a case that will discredit the military of the United States,” said Frank Church, but this was a ridiculous exaggeration.

Would their case have discredited private soldiers on the field of battle, bravely advancing against the enemy?

No!

Would their case have discredited junior officers or even brigade or division commanders?

No!

But their case would have totally discredited the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA, and the President of the United States, and was saving those goddamned liars more important than the 58,000 American soldiers who were killed in Vietnam?

Was saving those goddamned liars more important than the 2,000,000 Vietnamese civilians who perished in that senseless war?

And the answer was yes, for the Washington elite, and even for liberal Democrats like Frank Church and William Fulbright.

But would the American public have been so eager to sacrifice so many lives for nothing, if they had known the truth?

“In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them,” said Senator Frank Church.

“You cannot expect the people to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them.”

And how was the truth concealed?

Jun 18 2008

Curveball: ‘I should be treated like a king’

The guy behind the ultra-successful marketing campaign known as “IRAQ HAS WMDs!!!! IRAQ HAS MOBILE WEAPONS LABS!!!!” believes he should have been better-rewarded for his efforts.

In a series of interviews with Los Angeles Times reporters John Goetz and Bob Drogin, the Iraqi Intelligence Salesman Formerly Known As Curveball whined about how he isn’t appreciated in his own time.

The guy has a point. I mean, when you think about how much money has been made by leveraging the dubious-at-best assertions made by a guy who graduated with a D average from university – and, just to be clear, I’m talking about Curveball here, not any leaders of the free world – you’d think someone, somewhere could’ve seen fit to at least throw the guy a half a pallet or so of shrink-wrapped $100 bills, right?  

Mar 30 2008

How German “intelligence” helped Bush regime fabricate the case for war in Iraq.

One of the reasons the Bush-Cheney regime was able to lie so effectively to the American public in selling its case for invading Iraq was the appearance of legitimacy that came from foreign intelligence agencies.  Five years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States of America (with a coalition of coerced and bribed allies that eventually fell apart as the occupation went sour), the truth of how German intelligence officials helped fabricate the case for war is being told — but not in America.

Der Spiegel reporters Erich Follath, John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark tell at last the story of how a drunken Iraqi defector sold made-up bullshit to German authorities.

If you’re looking to hide out from the rest of the world, the grayish white residential block in this southern German city would be a good place to be. Six families live here, most of them with children, and the building blends inconspicuously into the dull suburban skyline. A green toy tractor is parked out front, the bicycles have baby trailers, one of them complete with an American flag fluttering in the breeze. On a mailbox hanging outside the building’s entrance, the name Rafed has been scrawled in pale green handwriting — difficult to read, but decipherable from up close.

There are many the world over who would love a chance to chat with the man whose mail lands in this post box. The US Congress is desperately interested in him, and the White House once even expressed an interest in trotting him out on primetime television. A book has been written about him and Hollywood is currently working on a motion picture documenting his life.

The man’s codename is “Curveball.” And in an earlier life, he played a crucial role in the geo-politics at the beginning of this decade: He was the man who provided vital “evidence” that ultimately contributed to the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies. But that role has since turned into his greatest problem: Everything he claimed to know about Iraq’s weapons program, all the proof he presented, was fabricated. His lifeline, though, has yet to be cut: Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), remains loyal to their source. They keep him under cover and protect him from uncomfortable questions — here in southern Germany.

The rest of the article is far too long to reproduce here in its entirety here, but I have done so on my discussion forum.  Or you can read the article at the link above.  At any rate, the truth of how four thousand American soldiers and roughly one million Iraqis (and counting) had their lives needlessly sacrificed on an alter of greed and imperial ambition must be told.  This is only one of many tiers in the construct of lies that led to war.  Others, including former CIA European station chief Tyler Drumheller and investigative journalists David Corn and Michael Isikoff, have described parts of the ‘Curveball’ story.  All these sources and more are worth reading, if for no other reason than to track the myriad deceptions used to sell the invasion.