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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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 Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 11:52 pm Post subject: |
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WASHINGTON - Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they have no evidence that Iraq produced chemical weapons after the 1991 Gulf War, despite recent reports from media outlets and Republican lawmakers.
Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan on Wednesday pointed to a newly declassified report that says coalition forces have found 500 munitions in Iraq that contained degraded sarin or mustard nerve agents.
They cited the report in an attempt to counter criticism by Democrats who say the decision to go to war was a mistake.
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13480264/ |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:17 am Post subject: |
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| Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they have no evidence that Iraq produced chemical weapons after the 1991 Gulf War, despite recent reports from media outlets and Republican lawmakers...the decision to go to war was a mistake. |
...and just to clarify, this was partly a mistake that Saddam very much encouraged and, in fact, cultivated over a decade of noncooperation and concealing as much as possible from the international community. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they have no evidence that Iraq produced chemical weapons after the 1991 Gulf War, despite recent reports from media outlets and Republican lawmakers...the decision to go to war was a mistake.
...partly a mistake that Saddam very much encouraged and, in fact, cultivated over a decade. |
Once again you are confirming either how "STUPID" and "Ideological, do whatever for personal gain" the U.S. leadership is OR
HOW decided Bush was from the get go (and this is confirmed through "evidence" to invade Iraq, way before 9/11) and that Saddam , as any tyrant, had to bluff inorder to avoid invasion as long as possible.
Of the two possibilities, stupidity would see to be the more likely but I think both were in operation.....
DD |
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WorldWide
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
HOW decided Bush was from the get go (and this is confirmed through "evidence" to invade Iraq, way before 9/11) and that Saddam , as any tyrant, had to bluff inorder to avoid invasion as long as possible.
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Don't forget that Cheney Inc. bombed Iraq BEFORE 9/11. Just a few weeks after taking office they started their war march by making up some bulls**t story about no-fly zones and radar stations. Invading Iraq was on Cheneys mind since he was in Pappi Bush's whitehouse.
ONE BIG PILE OF LIES!!! LIES LIES LIES from a corrupt administration.
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/02/16/iraq.airstrike.03/index.html |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 4:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Lol, what I love about Gopher and his ilk is that they are really dedicated in fighting a current going in another way. Noone cares what Saddam actually had, history is going to record this as the worst president of all time and the darkest time in American history. So Gopher is on the wrong side of history and it just kills him. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| Noone [sic] cares what Saddam actually had... |
I agree.
One group of partisans obstinately clings to and inflates whatever evidence is available that tends to back up the pretext for war; the other side obstinately rejects and downplays any evidence that tends to support the pretext for war. What Saddam objectively had and what his intentions were with respect to these kinds of weapons then and in the future is totally obscured in the crossfire of this partisan conflict.
But both sides lose sight of the fact that the weapons of mass destruction claim was just part of the larger U.S. pretext for war, and, ultimately, other factors made such a war inevitable, even though unique variables and complex interactions caused it to break out exactly how and when it did in fact break out.
This notwithstanding, had Saddam openly renounced weapons of mass destruction, had he collaborated with the UN weapons inspectors, and had he generally done more to reduce suspicions against him, he himself could easily have taken the wind out of the W. Bush Administration's sails on this issue.
But he did not choose to do this.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 6:22 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062401081.html?nav=rss_nation
Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says
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By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 25, 2006; Page A01
In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.
Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.
A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."
The sentence took Drumheller completely by surprise.
"We thought we had taken care of the problem," said the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, "but I turn on the television and there it was, again."
While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found.
Drumheller, who is writing a book about his experiences, described in extensive interviews repeated attempts to alert top CIA officials to problems with the defector, code-named Curveball, in the days before the Powell speech. Other warnings came prior to President Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003. In the same speech that contained the now famous "16 words" on Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium, Bush spoke in far greater detail about mobile labs "designed to produce germ warfare agents."
The warnings triggered debates within the CIA but ultimately made no visible impact at the top, current and former intelligence officials said. In briefing Powell before his U.N. speech, George Tenet, then the CIA director, personally vouched for the accuracy of the mobile-lab claim, according to participants in the briefing. Tenet now says he did not learn of the problems with Curveball until much later and that he received no warnings from Drumheller or anyone else.
"No one mentioned Drumheller, or Curveball," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the time, said in an interview. "I didn't know the name Curveball until months afterward."
Curveball's role in shaping U.S. declarations about Iraqi bioweapons capabilities was first described in a series of reports in the Los Angeles Times, and later in a March 2005 report by a presidential commission on U.S. intelligence failures regarding allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Drumheller's first-hand accounts add new detail about the CIA's embrace of a source whose credibility was already unraveling.
More than a year after Powell's speech, after an investigation that extended to three continents, the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels.
But in the fall of 2002, Curveball was living the life of an important spy. A Baghdad native whose real name has never been released, he was residing in a safe house in Germany, where he had requested asylum three years earlier. In return for immigration permits for himself and his family, the Iraqi supplied Germany's foreign intelligence service with what appeared to be a rare insider's account of one of President Saddam Hussein's long-rumored WMD programs.
Curveball described himself as a chemical engineer who had worked inside an unusual kind of laboratory, one that was built on a trailer bed and produced weapons for germ warfare. He furnished detailed, technically complex descriptions of mobile labs and even described an industrial accident that he said killed a dozen people.
The German intelligence agency BND faithfully passed Curveball's stories to the Americans. Over time, the informant generated more than 100 intelligence reports on secret Iraqi weapons programs -- the only such reports from an informant claiming to have visited and worked in mobile labs. Other informants, also later discredited, had claimed indirect knowledge of mobile labs.
In late 2002, the Bush administration began scouring intelligence files for reports of Iraqi weapons threats. Drumheller was asked to press a counterpart from a European intelligence agency for direct access to Curveball. Other officials confirmed that it was the German intelligence service.
The German official declined but then offered a startlingly candid assessment, Drumheller recalled. "He said, 'I think the guy is a fabricator,' " Drumheller said, recounting the conversation with the official, whom he declined to name. "He said: 'We also think he has psychological problems. We could never validate his reports.' "
When Drumheller relayed the warning to his superiors in October 2002, it sparked what he described as "a series of the most contentious meetings I've ever seen" in three decades of government work.
Although no American had ever interviewed Curveball, analysts with the CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control believed the informant's technical descriptions were too detailed to be fabrications.
"People were cursing. These guys were absolutely, violently committed to it," Drumheller said. "They would say to us, 'You're not scientists, you don't understand.' "
In January 2003, Drumheller received a new request from CIA headquarters to contact the German intelligence service about Curveball. This time, Drumheller recalled, the U.S. spy agency had three questions:
Could a U.S. official refer to Curveball's mobile lab accounts in an upcoming political speech?
Could the Germans guarantee that Curveball would stand by his account?
Could German intelligence verify Curveball's claims?
The reply from Berlin, as Drumheller recalls it, was less than encouraging: There are no guarantees
"They said, 'We have never been able to verify his claims,' " Drumheller recalled. "And that was all sent up to Tenet's office."
When Drumheller listened to Bush's speech several days later, he was astonished to hear the mobile labs described in detail.
A few days later, Drumheller was handed a draft of another key speech on Iraq: Powell's remarks to the U.N. Security Council accusing Hussein of reconstituting his WMD programs. This time, the speech included an obvious reference to Curveball -- an unnamed "chemical engineer" who worked in one of the labs -- as well as detailed drawings of mobile labs inspired by Curveball's descriptions.
Drumheller said he called the office of John E. McLaughlin, then the CIA deputy director, and was told to come there immediately. Drumheller said he sat across from McLaughlin and an aide in a small conference room and spelled out his concerns.
McLaughlin responded with alarm and said Curveball was "the only tangible source" for the mobile lab story, Drumheller recalled, adding that the deputy director promised to quickly investigate.
Portions of Drumheller's account of his meetings with McLaughlin and Tenet appear in the final report of the Silberman-Robb commission, which was appointed by Bush to investigate prewar U.S. intelligence failures on Iraq's weapons programs. The report cites e-mails and interviews with other CIA officials who were aware of the meetings.
In responding to questions about Drumheller, McLaughlin provided The Post with a copy of the statement he gave in response to the commission's report. The statement said he had no memories of the meeting with Drumheller and had no written documentation that the meeting took place.
"If someone had made these doubts clear to me, I would not have permitted the reporting to be used in Secretary Powell's speech," McLaughlin said in the statement.
In their briefings to Powell on Feb. 4, one day before the secretary's U.N. speech, Tenet and McLaughlin expressed nothing but confidence in the mobile-lab story, according to Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, who was present during the briefings.
"Powell and I were both suspicious because there were no pictures of the mobile labs," Wilkerson said. The drawings were constructed from Curveball's accounts.
But the CIA officials were persuasive. Wilkerson said the two men described the evidence on the mobile labs as exceptionally strong, based on multiple sources whose stories were independently corroborated.
"They said: 'This is it, Mr. Secretary. You can't doubt this one,' " Wilkerson said.
On the eve of the U.N. speech, Drumheller received a late-night phone call from Tenet, who said he was checking final details of the speech. Drumheller said he brought up the mobile labs.
"I said: 'Hey, boss, you're not going to use that stuff in the speech . . . ? There are real problems with that,' " Drumheller said, recalling the conversation.
Drumheller recalled that Tenet seemed distracted and tired and told him not to worry.
The following day, Tenet was seated directly behind Powell at the U.N. Security Council as the secretary of state presented a detailed lecture and slide show about an Iraqi mobile biological weapons program.
Tenet, responding to questions about Drumheller's accounts, provided to The Post a statement he had given in response to the Silberman-Robb Commission report in which he said he didn't learn of the problems with Curveball until much later. He did not recall talking to Drumheller about Curveball, and said it was "simply wrong" for anyone to imply that he knew about the problems with Curveball's credibility.
"Nobody came forward to say there is a serious problem with Curveball or that we have been told by the foreign representative of the service handling him that there are worries that he is a 'fabricator,' " Tenet said in his statement.
In late summer 2003, seven months after the U.N. speech, Tenet called Powell to say that the Curveball story had fallen apart, Wilkerson said. The call amounted to an admission that all of the CIA's claims Powell used in his speech about Iraqi weapons were wrong.
"They had hung on for a long time, but finally Tenet called Powell to say, 'We don't have that one, either,' " Wilkerson recalled. "The mobile labs were the last thing to go."
Staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 6:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
This notwithstanding, had Saddam openly renounced weapons of mass destruction, had he collaborated with the UN weapons inspectors, and had he generally done more to reduce suspicions against him, he himself could easily have taken the wind out of the W. Bush Administration's sails on this issue.
But he did not choose to do this. |
Bush would have found another reason to attack, I don't know it and it doesn't matter. Seriously, I was in Japan and I heard they were attacking Afghanistan. I was busy and didn't keep up with the news. Someone then said a few months later they were attacking Iraq. I was quite confused. Americans are smart, hardworking, and extremely professional people, but the American public, like any other country's public is pathetically stupid and would have been swayed by practically anything at the time. So would have Congress.
Last edited by laogaiguk on Mon Jun 26, 2006 4:43 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says |
Yes, an interesting article into the mindset/spinitis and "there is no truth but what we make up" of the administration.
I want to also add that not only did they use kooks like Curveball they also did the opposite --- discounted reliable info. from reliable sources.
Much initiation of this "disinformation" can be put on the Iraqi National congress and the American's "bought" man , Mr. Chalabi. he brought forward all these guys to get U.S. cash and support. He would have said his mother was tortured by Saddam , if there were money in a suitcase! We forget that a congressional investigation noted (in summary!!!) that this State Dept. sponsored program could not account for over 4 million in funds despite also spending millions more........
further , what about the most senior Iraqi official (Khadhir Hamza) to flee Saddaam's fold? He hardly got an ear when he stated categorically that Iraq was a Potemkin village and that there was no nuclear or WMD of note at all............
They used information when it suited them, ignored it when it didn't or modified it as appropriate. Masters of propaganda.
DD |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:54 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
Of the two possibilities, stupidity would see to be the more likely...
They used information when it suited them, ignored it when it didn't or modified it as appropriate. Masters of propaganda. |
How does your worldview reconcile statements like these? |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:13 am Post subject: |
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In my view, intelligence is not some Machevellian concept of weasling your way to power and staying there.... Intelligence is doing the "right" thing, avoiding violence and protecting life.
Stupidity is making others suffer for your own designs and not even feeling contrite about it. Stupid is something done against what is "the right thing". Even more stupid is not knowing you are doing it. This assessment, fits the Bush regime to a tee.
Masters are stupid, they don't take the long view of what it is to be human and live "fully". Stupid because they waste human life, they waste brotherhood and our common bonds. Stupid because they kill and destroy and don't "build".......
That's my reconciliation. Please, be a little more less straight jacket in your approach to language. Or as that great bard of American forthrightness, Forrest Gump would have said, "stupid is as stupid does." -- twisting info. to suit a war agenda is something "stupid".
DD |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 10:26 am Post subject: |
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| laogaiguk wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
This notwithstanding, had Saddam openly renounced weapons of mass destruction, had he collaborated with the UN weapons inspectors, and had he generally done more to reduce suspicions against him, he himself could easily have taken the wind out of the W. Bush Administration's sails on this issue.
But he did not choose to do this. |
Bush would have found another reason to attack, I don't know it and it doesn't matter. Seriously, I was in Japan and I heard they were attacking Afghanistan. I was busy and didn't keep up with the news. Someone then said a few months later they were attacking Iraq. I was quite confused. Americans are smart, hardworking, and extremely professional people, but the American public, like any other country's public is pathetically stupid and would have been swayed by practically anything at the time. So would have Congress. |
I think you make my point too broad here and you misunderstand -- and this is certainly in fashion on this board, so it does not surprise me in the least.
In any case, when I referred to "this issue," I was referring to the Administration's claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction only, and not the entire casus beli, which, as I assume you know, included other issues besides the weapons of mass destruction charge.
Like I said earlier, the W. Bush Administration seems to have had a score to settle with Saddam, and, especially after 9/11 and especially after Saddam's response to 9/11, war was inevitable.
But it did not need to involve a weapons of mass destruction allegation, it was not inevitable that it should have unfolded precisely as it did, and the cause of this, or, if you need to use the word, the fault for this rests equally on Saddam and W. Bush's shoulders. That was my point.
You and Ddeubel talk about "Americans,'" "Congress's," and "the Masters'" "stupidity," and you talk about it condescendingly. Fine. That is your prerogative. But you might want to start improving on this right where you are and read others' points a little more attentively before responding.
I think the general mood on this board is that America, no matter who is running it or what it does, is malicious and in the wrong. This leaves no room for compromise or reconciliation, only a bitter and neverending "argument" that leads nowhere but personal animosity between these simpleton, antiAmerican, very leftist, and, at least at times, very emotional posters, and those of us who try to adopt a more balanced, moderate view, and who are, unfortunately, much fewer in number.
In fact, I concede that the extremists, the conspiracy theorists, and the innocent simpletons ("America hurts innocent people!") have the floor and I wash my hands of this forum. It is just not informative anymore. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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| In fact, I concede that the extremists, the conspiracy theorists, and the innocent simpletons ("America hurts innocent people!") have the floor and I wash my hands of this forum. It is just not informative anymore. |
No, we never have any facts or post informative information. It is all just "partisan" and "imaginative".........
I suggest you use your new free time to pressure the U.S. government to step down and face the music of their dirty deeds. This would be truly American and a good use of your time. Go to it -- Let's bring 'em home and account for how much the U.S. treasury has been robbed by those who profit from misfortune (Katrina, Iraq....).
DD |
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| laogaiguk wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
This notwithstanding, had Saddam openly renounced weapons of mass destruction, had he collaborated with the UN weapons inspectors, and had he generally done more to reduce suspicions against him, he himself could easily have taken the wind out of the W. Bush Administration's sails on this issue.
But he did not choose to do this. |
Bush would have found another reason to attack, I don't know it and it doesn't matter. Seriously, I was in Japan and I heard they were attacking Afghanistan. I was busy and didn't keep up with the news. Someone then said a few months later they were attacking Iraq. I was quite confused. Americans are smart, hardworking, and extremely professional people, but the American public, like any other country's public is pathetically stupid and would have been swayed by practically anything at the time. So would have Congress. |
I think you make my point too broad here and you misunderstand -- and this is certainly in fashion on this board, so it does not surprise me in the least.
In any case, when I referred to "this issue," I was referring to the Administration's claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction only, and not the entire casus beli, which, as I assume you know, included other issues besides the weapons of mass destruction charge.
Like I said earlier, the W. Bush Administration seems to have had a score to settle with Saddam, and, especially after 9/11 and especially after Saddam's response to 9/11, war was inevitable.
But it did not need to involve a weapons of mass destruction allegation, it was not inevitable that it should have unfolded precisely as it did, and the cause of this, or, if you need to use the word, the fault for this rests equally on Saddam and W. Bush's shoulders. That was my point.
You and Ddeubel talk about "Americans,'" "Congress's," and "the Masters'" "stupidity," and you talk about it condescendingly. Fine. That is your prerogative. But you might want to start improving on this right where you are and read others' points a little more attentively before responding.
I think the general mood on this board is that America, no matter who is running it or what it does, is malicious and in the wrong. This leaves no room for compromise or reconciliation, only a bitter and neverending "argument" that leads nowhere but personal animosity between these simpleton, antiAmerican, very leftist, and, at least at times, very emotional posters, and those of us who try to adopt a more balanced, moderate view, and who are, unfortunately, much fewer in number.
In fact, I concede that the extremists, the conspiracy theorists, and the innocent simpletons ("America hurts innocent people!") have the floor and I wash my hands of this forum. It is just not informative anymore. |
The problem is you focus too much on things and refuse to talk about the wider picture when you are defending an idea. When you focus only on one thing, you can find a defense to it (look at the bible thumpers, this is their theory too). But then again, you are always talking about the wider picture, how in the end, history won't be affected that much by America. Maybe true, but it does affect us now, and most people do care a bit more about now than later. I knew you were only talking about WMD's, but that is too narrow. Taking that away would not have taken the wind out of Saddam's sails.
Finally, I talked about America's public (and the Congress is exactly the same kind of entity) but I made sure to point out that all country's publics are stupid when put together. Did you miss that? It just happens we are talking about the American one now. I could talk about how stupid the Japanese, Korean, Chinese or Canadian publics when put together are if you like, but it wouldn't have much to do with this topic.
Anyways, you are a new type of poster. THe anti-anti-america kind. My post had no America bashing (actually I believe I said some nice things about Americans), but human nature bashing that happens to be from America in this topic. You are just as bad as the anti-america ones who bash it for small or stupid reasons. You refuse to take even constructive criticism (which has been given to you on numerous occasions) but all you see is anti-americanism everywhere now. You don't even post in any other forums or topics (well, barely, a couple in the Battlestar Galactica doesn't count). I do suggest you take a break. |
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