Musings 85--Curveball puts Bush behind 8-ball...

Now that we are all stuffed to the gills on turkey and dressing, it is time to get back to politics and world events. Sitting in my living room on Greasy Ridge, I can still keep up with world events. Dish Network is the best thing to hit civilization since the invention of the indoor flushing toilet.

Mr. President has been running around the world looking for someone who likes him. I guess if he looks far enough he will find somebody--maybe. With VP Cheney making statements about the media "rewriting" history, Mr. President seems to be going on the offensive. He better be careful since there are bunches of information being dug up daily on the misinformation campaign used to sell the Iraq war to the American people.

A fine piece of reporting for the LA Times by Bob Drogin and John Goetz on November 20th, 2005, goes into how the administration used the informant "Curveball" to their advantage, even though they were told by German intelligence that he was not to be trusted. According to the article: "This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear that we could not verify the things he (Curveball) said." The Times article said that the German's warned, "he is not a stable, psychologically stable guy." Another German agent called him, "not a completely normal person."

Curveball is the one who told the administration that there were mobile labs and that these labs could "brew up enough weapons grade microbes...to kill thousands upon thousands of people."

Curveball was believed over the United Nations inspection teams that were scouring Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction. In hind sight, the UN guys had it right, but Mr. President and the Dark Lord were not interested. You must put this into perspective by remembering that the administration did everything in its power to discredit the UN during the run up to the war.

VP and Mr. President point to the CIA, saying that Director George Tenet said it was a "slam dunk" on finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Tenet has said no one told him that Curveball was not a credible source.

David Kay was appointed to take over the job of finding weapons of mass destruction by Tenet. The following is an excerpt from the LA Times piece:

"One CIA-led unit investigated Curveball himself. The leader was 'Jerry,' a veteran CIA bio-weapons analyst who had championed Curveball's case at the CIA weapons center. They found Curveball's personnel file in an Iraqi government storeroom. It was devastating.

"Curveball was last in his engineering class, not first, as he had claimed. He was a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted.

"Most important, records showed Curveball had been fired in 1995, at the very time he said he had begun working on bio-warfare trucks. A former CIA official said Curveball also apparently was jailed for a sex crime and then drove a Baghdad taxi.

"Jerry and his team interviewed 60 of Curveball's family, friends and co-workers. They all denied working on germ weapons trucks. Curveball's former bosses at the engineering center said that the CIA had fallen for 'water cooler gossip' and 'corridor conversations.'

"...Jerry and another CIA analyst abruptly broke off the investigation and took a military flight back to Washington. Kay said Jerry appeared to be nearing a nervous breakdown."

So after all this, Mr. President and his merry men still went to war. Rewriting history, says the Dark Lord VP...Facts are facts, I say.

I guess you could say that "Curveball" has put Mr. President behind the 8-ball, and when you are behind the 8-ball you seldom have much of a shot. Mr. President, Thanksgiving is over, but I smell your goose cooking.