Los Angeles Times, November 20:
"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.
"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."
The Bush administration and Blair and Howard governments didn't lie about intelligence before the Iraq war?
Read the whole article.
"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.
"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."
The Bush administration and Blair and Howard governments didn't lie about intelligence before the Iraq war?
Read the whole article.
2 Comments:
Leaders in the US, UK and more recently Australia love to legitimise their speeches and prejudiced policy pronouncements with "intelligence sources [or services] confirm".
Even if the actual source is an unreliable loser.
And the media usually runs with it, unquestioned.
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