Replies to post #138785 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

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The Iraqi informant's German handlers say they had told U.S. officials that his information was 'not proven,' and were shocked when President Bush and Colin L. Powell used it in key prewar speeches.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-curveball20nov20,0,1753730.story?coll=la-home-h...

BERLIN — The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

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According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm.

"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."

The German authorities, speaking about the case for the first time, also said that their informant suffered from emotional and mental problems. "He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy," said a BND official who supervised the case. "He is not a completely normal person," agreed a BND analyst.

Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this year. The commission did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story was true, or the German officials who handled his case.

The German account emerges as the White House is lashing out at domestic critics, particularly Senate Democrats, over allegations the administration manipulated intelligence to go to war. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney called such claims reprehensible and pernicious.

In Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is resuming its long-stalled investigation of the administration's use of prewar intelligence. Committee members said last week that the Curveball case would be a key part of their review. House Democrats are calling for a similar inquiry.

An investigation by The Times based on interviews since May with about 30 current and former intelligence officials in the U.S., Germany, England, Iraq and the United Nations, as well as other experts, shows that U.S. bungling in the Curveball case was worse than official reports have disclosed.

[teapeebubbles]

Chávez: Bush is a Genocidal Madman & America is now a direct descendant of Nazi Germany...

Although I have a couple problems with Hugo Chávez, I love it when he tells the truth, especially when it is so difficult to get the truth here in Bushzarro world, a criminal nation with a corporate media filtering system allergic to the truth. "The planet’s most serious danger is the government of the United States…. The people of the United States are being governed by a killer, a genocidal murderer and a madman," Chávez said at a meeting of Venezuelan and Brazilian business executives in Caracas, reports Forbes.

Of course, the corporate media did not report this because it is true, but rather because they never miss a chance to portray Chávez as spiteful and irrational (according to our stenographers, megaphoning common fallacious myths, the United States has nothing but heart-felt compassion for the world, and if we screw up occasionally—for instance, mass murdering around 130,000 Iraqis—it is because we are human and to be human is to err, etc., ad nauseam).

"The Venezuelan president criticized testimony to the US Congress by Washington’s top diplomat for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, who said Venezuela was a 'threat to regional stability,’" Forbes notes.

Of course, it is the other way around—the United States is not only a "threat to regional stability" but global security as well and, with the should be institutionalized mental patient Bush in office, and the vicious neocons directing foreign policy, Chávez is absolutely spot on: the "people of the United States are being governed by a killer, a genocidal murderer and a madman."

And we don’t need to look far to find the evidence.

In Iraq, the United States has killed over a hundred thousand people—and in the future thousands, possibly a million or more, Iraqis will die from various cancers and health problems directly attributable to depleted uranium. In addition, thousands of U.S. soldiers will give birth to deformed children and die terrible deaths from the same deadly substance. Due to the fact we all live in a hermetically sealed biosphere, the possibility is very real some of who have never touched foot in Iraq will die from this plaque as well.

Remember, Bush is a good Christian, according to millions of Americans.

In fact, Bush is the closest thing to a modern day Nazi. Bush and Cheney support torture and rumors are now emerging that the Abu Ghraib rape and torture photos were taken for the sadistic pleasure of the neocon clan because they get their rocks off on this sort of perverse sickness.

I don’t doubt it.

America is now a direct descendant of Nazi Germany. Our appointed and election hijacking president has a sordid family history of cavorting with Nazis. The CIA was created by Nazi intelligence, as was our space industry and missile technology. Our crimes (so far) pale in comparison to the Nazis only in magnitude.

Hugo Chávez realizes Bush and the Zionist neocons and their playmates the rapture-crazed Christian Zionists are on a crusade to render the planet into a neolib-friendly gulag. He is speaking out and the corporate media is paying attention because it is their assigned task to make him appear insane (because anybody who says negative things about America and our beloved leader is crazy).

Hugo Chávez is on the neocon death list and he knows it.

No doubt he hopes the Bush administration will implode before it gets around to taking him out. It tried once but fumbled the ball. Next time it won’t screw up.

However, I don’t think the Bush administration will implode anytime soon.

Problem is, the Bush administration may engage in a crime wave before it explodes.

Imagine Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold with nukes and you have a pretty good if not chilling idea what Bush and Cheney will do before history ushers them out the back door.

http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/70649