elizabeth wrote:
> On Nov 5, 5:58 am, "sharx35" wrote:
>> PhredBear wrote:
>>> << All CREDIBLE leaders in Europe have SUPPORTED Coalition efforts
>>> in Iraq, by the way. Amazing how a bunch
>>> of left-wing LIARS in Europe, who couldn't even win WWII by
>>> themselves, fancy themselves SO knowledgeable
>>> about OTHER nation's affairs.>>
>>
>>> Have a read of this review of a recently published book, thicko.
>>
>>> Espionage
>>
>>> Inventing the dots
>>> Nov 1st 2007
>>> From The Economist print edition
>>
>> The Economist....home of MANY left-wing loonies.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> THIS is a book you can imagine Alec Leamas, the miserable spook hero
>>> of "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold", enjoying on the number 11
>>> bus back to his dingy Hammersmith flat. "What do you think spies
>>> are: priests, saints, martyrs?" Leamas famously snarled. "They're a
>>> squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies,
>>> sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to
>>> brighten their rotten lives."
>>> Plus ça change, apparently. "Curveball" offers a squalid and
>>> up-to-date procession of real-life fools, traitors and game-players
>>> seeking to brighten their rotten lives. Principal among them is an
>>> Iraqi chemical engineer who pitched up in Germany without a visa in
>>> 1999. He asked for political asylum and knew that he would greatly
>>> improve his chances of getting it if he could make himself
>>> interesting to the intelligence services. Which he did. Before long
>>> he had their rapt attention, as well as his own code name,
>>> Curveball. Bob Drogin, a reporter on the Los Angeles Times, relates
>>> how over the next couple of years Curveball impressed his
>>> interrogators with his detailed knowledge of Iraq's chemical and
>>> biological weapons programmes. He spoke at length of such things as
>>> mobile laboratories that were being used to cook up lethal bugs.
>>> The Americans were desperate to have a look at him too. But the
>>> Germans fobbed off their rivals with transcripts and reports,
>>> blocking direct access to their prize informer.
>>> Nevertheless, Curveball's story became an important part of the
>>> American government's case for invading Iraq. Information taken from
>>> his testimony cropped up in the National Intelligence Estimate of
>>> October 2002 (which maintained with "high confidence" that Iraq had
>>> chemical and biological weapons); in George Bush's
>>> state-of-the-union message in January 2003 (which included a
>>> reference to "mobile weapons labs designed to produce germ-warfare
>>> agents"); and in Colin Powell's presentation to the UN the
>>> following month (which featured computer-generated images of those
>>> mobile weapons labs, based on descriptions and drawings by
>>> Curveball).
>>> But it was all rubbish. Curveball was a low-level drone and
>>> borderline nutcase with a gift for telling people what they wanted
>>> to hear. In the run-up to the war-despite the doubts expressed by
>>> some experts about Curveball's reliability-nobody bothered to check
>>> out his story properly. It was not until 2004, a year after the
>>> invasion of Iraq, that the CIA admitted that Curveball had foxed
>>> them. He "appears to be fabricating in this stream of reporting",
>>> the burn notice read.
>>
>>> Mr Drogin points out that, in the aftermath of September 11th 2001,
>>> critics lambasted American intelligence for failing to "connect the
>>> dots that might have prevented the terrorist attacks". What makes
>>> the Curveball case so dreadful, he reckons, is that this time they
>>> simply invented the dots. "If Curveball fused fact and fiction,
>>> others twisted and magnified his account in grotesque ways," he
>>> concludes. "Time and again, bureaucratic rivalries, tawdry
>>> ambitions and spineless leadership proved more important than
>>> professional integrity." You can just about hear old Alec Leamas
>>> muttering "Told you so."- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
> Locked and loaded . .. .
>
> Do you have 24/7 care?
Surely, YOU do, in that state hospital you now reside in.
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