Eric S. Margolis, writes in the
Yemen Observer about the 'black comedy of the Iraqi defector codenamed “Curveball” tells us a lot about how the United States has made such a mess in the Mideast.'
In 2000, an Iraqi, Ahmed Al Janabi, defected to Germany. To bolster his refugee status, he offered Germany’s intelligence service, BND, a bunch of laughable lies about Iraqi chemical and biological weapons. The most notorious: the claim that president Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons units that threatened the world. The Germans didn’t believe “Curveball”. None of his claims checked out. But, being dutiful US ally, and knowing the Bush administration was hungry for alarming reports about Iraq, no matter how dubious, Germany passed on “Curveball’s” claims to CIA.
CIA’s able European chief, Tyler Drumheller, warned the claims were patently false. But CIA’s sycophantic director, George Tenet, knowing president Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, yearned for war against Iraq, sent “Curveball’s” phony tale to the White House.
This is hardly the first time fakers have made monkeys of US intelligence. For good example, back in the 1980’s, an Iranian working for Israeli intelligence, Manucher Ghorbanifar, sent president Reagan’s Washington into hysteria with phony tales of non-existent Libyan hit-men.
The deputy CIA director later admitted “Curveball’s” tall story was the only “evidence” he had for claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations and gravely warned of nefarious Iraqi germ weapons that threatened the world, complete with fanciful drawings of bio-warfare vans. Powell even fingered a little phial of white powder that everyone took to be anthrax. It was a performance worthy of Stalin’s Moscow show trials. Behind Powell sat CIA chief Tenet, and US UN chief John Negroponte.
How Powell, a decent if hardly brilliant man, allowed himself to be made a fool and liar, remains a mystery. Powell now blames CIA and the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency. But he, the Bush White House and Congress were fools for swallowing all the lies about Iraq. The US Congress and media demanded action against Iraq. As war fever swept over the United States, this writer, an old Iraq hand, warned Powell’s claims were absurd and that Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor delivery systems.
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