Current Events

TOPICS:

Previous

PAGE: 

1 ... 

10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

 ... 433

Next

Holden_Caulfield

Holden_Caulfield

Ann Arbor, MI
April 2004

JUN 18, 2008 10:48 PM

The Los Angeles Times managed to track down and interview Rafid Ahmed Alwan, a.k.a. the infamous 'Curveball', purveyor of a remarkable series of stories on Iraq's supposed biological weapons capabilities. It was he that came up with the "mobile weapons labs" that Colin Powell showed cartoon drawings of at the United Nations, that Iraq was attempting to smuggle WMD's from England, and that a collection of corn sheds at Djerf al Nadaf were part of a secret biological weapons program. He now lives in Germany.

As it turns out, of course, he bullshitted the whole thing. In Iraq he was a con man, thief, embezzler and general crook who was fired from job after job.

He claimed, for example, that the son of his former boss, Basil Latif, secretly headed a vast weapons of mass destruction procurement and smuggling scheme from England. British investigators found, however, that Latif's son was a 16-year-old exchange student, not a criminal mastermind. [...]

"Rafid told five or 10 stories every day," Freah said in an interview. "I'd ask, 'Where have you been?' And he'd say, 'I had a problem with my car.' Or, 'My family was sick.' But I knew he was lying."

He had a gift for it and "was not embarrassed when caught in a lie," Freah said.

At the Djerf al Nadaf warehouse, laborers treated seeds from local farmers with fungicides to prevent mold and rot. But Alwan convinced his BND handlers that the site's corn-filled sheds were part of Iraq's secret germ weapons program. He worked there, he told them, until 1998, when an unreported biological accident occurred.

In fact, Alwan had been dismissed three years earlier, in 1995, after inflating expenses and faking receipts for tools, supplies and lamb for a party.

"I fired him," Freah said. "He was corrupt and he was found stealing."


Even his fellow Burger King employees in Germany knew him as a serial liar...

In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and would report any fellow Iraqi worker who criticized Hussein's regime.

They couldn't decide if he was dangerous or crazy.

"During breaks, he told stories about what a big man he was in Baghdad," said Hamza Hamad Rashid, who remembered an odd scene with the pudgy Alwan in his too-tight Burger King uniform praising Hussein in the home of der Whopper. "But he always lied. We never believed anything he said."


So his family, his friends, his co-workers and his employers, from Iraqi warehouses to German Burger Kings, all knew him to be a con man, crook and general nut. German officials warned the Americans not to use information provided by him, and weapons inspectors who investigated his claims before the war found them false.

But that still wasn't enough to keep his valued "information" out of the hands of the special intelligence gathering operations of Rumsfeld and Cheney, who then passed it to the press, or from Colin Powell's speech at the United Nations, or from George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, or from any of the myriad other administration reports used to justify the war. Truly, the Iraq War was a perfect example of a group of con men getting together and deciding to believe each other's stories.

Coalition deaths in the Iraq War have recently topped 4,100. The number of Iraqi deaths are not known, and not counted.


http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/18/174429/413/975/538053

I believe that there are better "curveballs" thrown in high school baseball.

One would think this strengthens Obama's antiwar stance and weakens that of wobbly-kneed McCain.

So, do you think this merits building fifty bases in Iraq? Hopefully, the Iraqi Government will have the final say in the matter. Isn't that what Democracy is all about?

Or do purple fingers only count when the White House isn't caught red-handed?

ARRR!!!Have you posted in the SG Liberal Politics group lately? ARRR!!!

FellOnEarth

FellOnEarth

Temecula, CA
April 2006

JUN 18, 2008 11:53 PM

So which was it, flawed or false intelligence? "Curveball" was obviously a hack, but as far as the Bush administration was concerned, he was the gift that kept on giving. To them, it didn't matter if the numbers didn't add up in the equation, as long as there simply was an equation, it was good enough for them. Despite the fact that virtually the entire US intelligence community, and the German source who doubted Curveball's authenticity, they were simply ignored in favor of chalking up the board:

January 29, [...] the day after President George W. Bush's State of the Union address, which [...] included the claim that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons plants, State Department [and] CIA officers [...] were simultaneously in an uproar over the CURVEBALL material. In answer to queries from CIA manager Margaret Henoch, the German intelligence service, which had Alwan in their charge, refused to certify the CURVEBALL data and denied CIA access to the original transcripts recording the conversations. Thus, the agency never had direct contact with CURVEBALL, who in fact had only been seen once by an American, an official of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who had harbored doubts about the man. The CIA was working strictly from DIA translations of German texts. Henoch feared using third-hand information that contained transliteration problems. Her suspicions were further aroused after it became clear the German service itself doubted CURVEBALL's reliability.

Source.

So the question remains, why did this guy's faulty intelligence get past the intelligence filters and become fast tracked into an official Intelligence Estimate, instead of undergoing proper vetting? It was either a colossal failure in methodology and management, tantamount to criminal negligence, or the facts were willfully ignored and intentionally used to mislead the American public (and lawmakers whatever ) to make the case for war.

This is precisely why we have articles of impeachment being filed against both Cheney & Bush now.

motorfirebox

motorfirebox

Pittsburgh, PA
March 2004

JUN 19, 2008 06:27 AM

'harbored doubts' about him? he worked at Burger King. now, there's nothing wrong with working at Burger King; i did so myself, during college. but i'm pretty sure that nobody mistook me for a fucking source of international intelligence while i was slinging whoppers and Hershey pies to the fat fuckers who came into the store. what the shit, man?

coyotemike

coyotemike

Kearney, NE
May 2006

JUN 19, 2008 07:25 AM

I caught a bit of a certain right wing asshole's radio show the other day (oddly, not Limbaugh. It was some woman whose name I forget for the moment). The latest tactic is to say that Bush is not at fault because he was given faulty information.

Nothing like passing the buck, eh? This is what we get when we elect an administration without the slightest skill in critical thought.

poeticdesires

poeticdesires

Baltimore, MD
June 2005

JUN 19, 2008 12:41 PM

coyotemike said:
I caught a bit of a certain right wing asshole's radio show the other day (oddly, not Limbaugh. It was some woman whose name I forget for the moment). The latest tactic is to say that Bush is not at fault because he was given faulty information.

Nothing like passing the buck, eh? This is what we get when we elect an administration without the slightest skill in critical thought.



What that woman said is akin to a manager saying, "Oh, it's not my fault. My employee gave me false information. I shouldn't be held responsible."
If President Bush were the manager of a McDonalds', he would have been fired long ago. As is, he holds the most powerful position in our government, and the world, seemingly without any real consequences to his actions.

SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

JUN 19, 2008 04:15 PM

poeticdesires said:

coyotemike said:
I caught a bit of a certain right wing asshole's radio show the other day (oddly, not Limbaugh. It was some woman whose name I forget for the moment). The latest tactic is to say that Bush is not at fault because he was given faulty information.

Nothing like passing the buck, eh? This is what we get when we elect an administration without the slightest skill in critical thought.



What that woman said is akin to a manager saying, "Oh, it's not my fault. My employee gave me false information. I shouldn't be held responsible."
If President Bush were the manager of a McDonalds', he would have been fired long ago. As is, he holds the most powerful position in our government, and the world, seemingly without any real consequences to his actions.



Not for him, anyway. Many thousands of dead, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on a liar's war, huge damage to America's image abroad... Colossally stupid and counterproductive.

bald_eagle

bald_eagle

Indianapolis, IN
November 2006

JUN 19, 2008 05:12 PM

motorfirebox said:
'harbored doubts' about him? he worked at Burger King. now, there's nothing wrong with working at Burger King; i did so myself, during college. but i'm pretty sure that nobody mistook me for a fucking source of international intelligence while i was slinging whoppers and Hershey pies to the fat fuckers who came into the store. what the shit, man?


It's becoming more and more obvious that he didn't care who said it. He just wanted somebody to say there were weapons there, so he could do what he had already decided to do.

PaulNikon

PaulNikon

Melbourne, FL
February 2003

JUN 20, 2008 12:35 AM

I have a job for him. Grave digger at Arlington.

Mr_Matt_

Mr_Matt_

Hollywood, FL
July 2005

JUN 20, 2008 05:38 AM

PaulNikon said:
I have a job for him. Grave digger at Arlington.



Absolutely. In the winter. With bare hands.