Iraq Invasion Whoppers
Posted: February 15, 2011 Filed under: Central Intelligence Agency, Diplomacy Nightmares, Federal Budget, Foreign Affairs, Gitmo, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq, Media, Psychopaths in charge, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups, Surreality, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: bioweapons, Curveball, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq Invasion, Jeb Bush, PNAC, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, Rogues Gallery, Steve Forbes, William J Bennet, William Kristol 25 Comments
Oops, there goes another rationale for the Iraq Invasion
Any number of us that closely followed the trumped-up case for the Iraq invasion figured that most of the evidence was shoddy if not based on out-and-out lies. I seriously wanted to throw up every time I heard some Bush official equivocate smoking guns and smoking mushroom clouds. The most disheartening thing was the number of people that believed them. The entire Iraq Invasion run-up just showed how vulnerable the American public is to propaganda and jingoism. You could hardly hold a civil conversation with so much hysteria-based flag waving going on.
So, it’s another one of those moments where you learn exactly how duped the entire country was by a set of people just itching to scratch that NeoCon rash. The UK Guardian reports that the “man codenamed Curveball ‘invented’ tales of bioweapons”. Colin Powell’s judgment looked bad then, it looks nonexistent now. Remember, he was considered the moderate voice of reason. You can watch the video and hear the words of Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi: ‘I had the chance to fabricate something …’ I’m sure they begged him to do it.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.
“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”
The admission comes just after the eighth anniversary of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in which the then-US secretary of state relied heavily on lies that Janabi had told the German secret service, the BND. It also follows the release of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, in which he admitted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction programme.
The careers of both men were seriously damaged by their use of Janabi’s claims, which he now says could have been – and were – discredited well before Powell’s landmark speech to the UN on 5 February 2003.
The former CIA chief in Europe Tyler Drumheller describes Janabi’s admission as “fascinating”, and said the emergence of the truth “makes me feel better”. “I think there are still a number of people who still thought there was something in that. Even now,” said Drumheller.
It was no secret that most of the advisers surrounding Dubya Bush were the same ones disappointed in Poppy’s decision to stop the first Gulf War with Saddam still in power. There were many good reasons to leave Saddam in power including the geopolitical stalemate created by tensions between the Sunni Saddam and the Shia Clerics in Iran that frequently burst into horrible wars. We shifted the balance of power in the area to Iran and have undoubtedly created a long term mess in Iraq itself. It’s cost us lives and money. It’s cost the Iraqis untold horrors. We continue to learn it was based on nothing but a pack of lies. This mea culpa is just the latest.
The empty hull of PNAC still sits on the web. It still names the rogue’s list of ideologues responsible for the blood of the innocents and the lost treasury of our now financially crippled nation that was wasted in the name of their zealotry. The list pretty much contains the same names of idiots that now want to deconstruct New Deal programs under the banner of fiscal restraint. They have as much thought-out rationale on that as they did on the Iraq invasion. They’re also trying to resurrect themselves in other areas. This cannot come to pass. It must not stand.
The last entry on the PNAC page comes from around 2005 for the group, but the lot of them are still wrecking damage on the US and the world with bankrupt ideas. I remember the first time I saw it back in 2001. It still shocks. The names of people like William Kristol, Jeb Bush, William J Bennet, and Steve Forbes should be printed on some wall of shame some where in a museum dedicated to showing how zealotry and lies win over sanity and rational thought way too many times in this country’s recent history. They are the zealicons that have gotten us into way too costly trouble and yet they rise.
Again, the most dangerous part of this is that the people who pushed the lies of Curveball are screwballs seeking resurrection and redemption. Donald Rumsfeld has a book of lies out and just won a “Defender of the Constitution” award from CPAC. Wolfowicz’s ugly mug was on FOX news this weekend. There’s mumblings and jumblings about Jeb Bush and a presidential run in 2012 even though recent polls are quite unkind to the former Florida governor for that position. Unfortunately, polls are very kind to him for toppling Senator Bill Nelson. They’re all still jerking off to the Reagan myth too. How many shows trotted out Bill Bennet for the zombie Reagan salutes? How many failures does it take before we rid the world and our country of them?
The US press isn’t too open about the debauched show of propaganda and lies that created the soundtrack to the Iraq invasion, the failed occupation, and the resultant mess that is now Iraq. It hides in their closet of shame. It’s because they all played the parts of the little drummer boy until we had a complete drum corps of co-conspirators to lies. I imagine that the White House won’t want this played up too much either. After all, the first thing they did was to shut down all attempts to hold the scoundrels and war criminals accountable. The White House seems all too eager to buy into the fiscal crisis meme that is being used to bring attention away from important role of the invasion in creating the deficit today. Better to blame old people who can’t pay their electric bills and poor children that require a little extra help to get an education than the neocons that shot away our treasury in the Baghdad sky. The White House also refuses to denounce the other Zombie Reagan myth of trickle down economics. Where is Dick Cheney’s chorus of ‘deficits don’t matter, Reagan proved that now’? What fresh hell is this?
This same group of people endlessly manufacture falsehoods and fairy tales that have failed test after test in the real world. Yet, here they are right back on the weekly news shows and right back in polling for Federal office. Read about the lies, then ask yourself, can we really afford to let the same group of people who peddled lies ten years ago find a new life now?
I got one more Reagan meme for you today. Just Say NO.
Fox News resurrecting the Zombies and their Zombie Memes on 2/12/2012
Watch the continuation of the lies and ressurection here.
A Rogue’s Gallery of Lying Liars and War Criminals
peej
Carissa
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
OMG! These are the REAL zombies! The undead. They won’t die. Cheney doesn’t even have a heartbeat and he’s still staggering around.
Curveball:
Not to mention destroying the US economy, A-hole!
Judith Miller’s photo should be included in the rogue’s gallery too.
Make room for Tom Friedman next to Judith Miller, please.
From 2007:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-gizbert/london-calling-byebye-jud_b_63662.html
I just finished reading the Guardian article, and, I have to say, “Curveball” sounds like a five-year old (and that’s being charitable). I don’t make a living out of psychological evaluations, but I’m sure that the CIA, or whomever, has plenty of experts who do, and I imagine those types interviewed this man. How anyone could have believed he was credible is just beyond me.
Dak,
It says the video is private. I can’t get it on You tube either.
rats… it’s on fox let me see what I can do with it there.
I watched the interview on your Guardian link.
The fox link goes to a ghastly apologia session from the 12th where every one is so happy to see a moral man like Rumsfeld back in public life. It’ll make you gag for sure!!!
another whopper….we are in deep financial doo doo because of ” social spending”
Yes! It’s those damn, selfish poor people who want to be warm in the winter! Clearly these poor folk have to have a lesson in ” shared sacrifice”.
I’m just waiting for the elite to make any sacrifice whatsoever
crickets
Obama’s budget and the rot of American capitalism
….Behind the “debate” in Washington and the media over the budget is a massive lie—the claim that the budget deficits are a product of excessive social spending. Obama’s budget director Jacob Lew summed up this grotesque falsification an op-ed column published in the New York Times February 6, under the headline, “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us.” Lew claimed that the causes of the projected budget deficits were “decisions to make two large tax cuts without offsetting them and to create a Medicare prescription drug benefit without paying for it, combined with the effects of the recession…”
This list is notable for what it leaves out: the cost of two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, which runs into the trillions; and the bank bailouts, where more trillions in public funds were placed at the disposal of the financial aristocracy, with no questions asked. The military budget by itself accounts for the lion’s share of the ten-year deficit: more than $7 trillion of the projected $10 trillion…..
The wars and the financial savaging of the adverage person go hand in hand. Whoppers abound
http://tinyurl.com/5t8ccyl
Sounds like we have legitimate cause to take to the streets right here at home. Both parties are ganging up against the American people because we cost too much in social spending after they both authorized the wars and the bailouts with our money. And I heard Hillary today say State was investing in Internet freedom, which will include tools to help people wipe their digital trails clean in case of detention!
can’t beleive he wants to cut HEAP 👿
I was against the Iraq war from the start. Though I’d always admired Colin Powell, I listened to the presentation he gave before the UN and knew he was lying through his teeth. Later, his aide admitted that Powell said that was “the worst day of his life.” If only he had refused.
We spent and wasted blood and treasure in all the wrong places. And for what? Some neo-con wet dream. It was disgusting then. It’s still disgusting and the people responsible should have been prosecuted. But to their utter shame, the Dems took any chance of investigation off the table. They were too, too excited with their own chance for mega-power.
And here we are. No accountability anywhere–in wars, in economics, in anything.
I don’t see what the problem is, we have always been at war with Eastasia…..
You’re joking-right?
google the last phrase starting with we…..
fascinating Orwell…
Dak: Just saw the nola.com article on that sh!t that plowed into all of those students in Hammond.
Link?
bb: That’s where dak was teaching, not sure if she’s still there or not.
bb: Sorry about that, my bad. Allergies or something is acting up and feel like my head is kind of in a fog.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/02/do_not_publish_driver_receives.html
No problem. Thanks for the link!
What a horrible story.
That driver was the brother of one of my students at the time. I was teaching there.That was a really sad event. I remember it well. I’m not teaching anywhere right now. I’m just finishing up my dissertation and filling out job applications right now for the fall. I have no idea where I’ll end up at this point.
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Colin Powell is shocked!! Shocked!!!
Nobody puts Colin in a corner!!!