Bush invokes Godwin's Law

[Fred56]

There certainly is the appearance of different versions of what war is, and different interpretations, to the effect that "someone" can define their own version, and not even call it a war...

 

This is more than a little bit how it looks from afar, at least.

[iNow]

(Did you catch that 60 Minutes bit on Curve Ball, btw? Been pondering whether to start another thread on it. Any thoughts?)

It's scary how big of a failure our intelligence was with this. It made me rather angry actually.

[bascule]

Did you catch that 60 Minutes bit on Curve Ball, btw? Been pondering whether to start another thread on it. Any thoughts?

 

Nope, I don't watch TV, except for clips people upload to YouTube

[Pangloss]

Understandable. Try this link, and if that doesn't work try this one, and just click on the Video link for the report headlined "Faulty intelligence source curveball revealed". Runs about 14 minutes.

 

It's also available on YouTube at the two links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Fqi6A236A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMeT7EkA7w8

 

I haven't watched those links but I assume they're full and intact, and of course the nice thing about YouTube is you get to skip the advertising. But they'll probably get pulled once CBS notices them. Oh well.

 

It's a pretty good report, revealing the name of Curve Ball for the first time and exposing his shady past. It could go down in history as the biggest con job ever.

[DrDNA]

Regarding Curve Ball. I started a thread on him about 5 days ago, but it just kind of died. I think it is an amazing story worthy of a Three Stooges or Monty Python skit except it is just too scary to be funny.

Quote

""Faulty Intel Source "Curve Ball" Revealed

60 Minutes: Iraqi's Fabricated Story Of Biological Weapons Aided U.S. Arguments For Invasion

 

'Curve Ball' Revealed

 

(CBS) 60 Minutes has identified the man whose fabricated story of Iraqi biological weapons drove the U.S. argument for invading Iraq. It has also obtained video of "Curve Ball," as he was known in intelligence circles, and discovered he was not only a liar, but also a thief and a poor student instead of the chemical engineering whiz he claimed to be.

60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon's two-year investigation will be broadcast this Sunday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

 

Curve Ball is an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan, who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999. To bolster his asylum case and increase his importance, he told officials he was a star chemical engineer who had been in charge of a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was making mobile biological weapons.

60 Minutes has learned that Alwan’s university records indicate he did study chemical engineering but earned nearly all low marks, mostly 50s. Simon’s investigation also uncovered an arrest warrant for theft from the Babel television production company in Baghdad where he once worked.

 

Also appearing in Sunday's segment is video that 60 Minutes obtained of Alwan at a Baghdad wedding in 1993.

 

He eventually wound up in the care of German intelligence officials to whom he continued to spin his tale of biological weapons. His plan succeeded partially because he had worked briefly at the plant outside Baghdad and his descriptions of it were mostly accurate. He embellished his account by saying 12 workers had been killed by biological agents in an accident at the plant.

 

More than a hundred summaries of his debriefings were sent to the CIA, which then became a pillar - along with the now-disproved Iraqi quest for uranium for nuclear weapons - for the U.S. decision to bomb and then invade Iraq. The CIA-director George Tenet gave Alwan’s information to Secretary of State Colin Powell to use at the U.N. in his speech justifying military action against Iraq.

 

Tenet gave the information to Powell despite a letter - a copy of which 60 Minutes obtained - addressed to him by the head of German intelligence stating that Alwan appeared to be believable, but there was no evidence to verify his story.

 

Through a spokesman, Tenet denies ever seeing the letter. "[Tenet] needs to talk to his special assistants if he didn’t see it," says Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official. "I am sure they showed it to him and I am sure ... it wasn’t what they wanted to see," he tells Simon.

 

Other CIA officials doubted Curve Ball’s authenticity, including former Central Group Chief Margaret Henoch, who speaks publicly for the first time, telling Simon she openly refuted Alwan’s story. "And it was like 'Whack a Mole.' He just popped right back up. It was unbelievable."

 

Alwan was caught when CIA interrogators were finally allowed to question him and confronted him with evidence that his story could not be as he described it. Weapons inspectors had examined the plant at Djerf al Nadaf before the fall of Baghdad and found no evidence of biological agents.

 

In the end, however, Alwan got what he wanted. He is believed to be in Germany, free and probably living under an assumed name.

 

Why did he do it?

 

"It was a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth," says Drumheller. "It just shows ... the law of unintended consequences," he tells Simon.""" End Quote

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n3440577.shtml

 

This is what happens when you don't study and don't do your homework. The begining of the end of civilization as we know it.

______________

[Pangloss]

I remember that post now (the "end of civilization" bit stuck in my mind), sorry for not bumping and replying there instead. I don't know about end of civilization (grin) but it does make one angry, as iNow mentions above. We're supposed to have the greatest intelligence service in the world, or we SHOULD given how much money is ripped from my angry fingers for it every April 15th. The idea that they would miss something so superficially obvious is really freaking annoying. We have every right to be mad and to want to hold people accountable for these mistakes, not to mention not wanting to repeat them.

 

In spite of all that, I still don't find it plausible that Bush lied. Some on the left use this as evidence, but it doesn't pass the stink test because he had to know his error would have been obvious the moment we invaded and didn't find anything. As annoying as it is, it's still more plausible that it was a mistake.

 

But boy what a whopper it was.

[DrDNA]

We're supposed to have the greatest intelligence service in the world, or we SHOULD given how much money is ripped from my angry fingers for it every April 15th. The idea that they would miss something so superficially obvious is really freaking annoying. We have every right to be mad and to want to hold people accountable for these mistakes, not to mention not wanting to repeat them.

 

In spite of all that, I still don't find it plausible that Bush lied. Some on the left use this as evidence, but it doesn't pass the stink test because he had to know his error would have been obvious the moment we invaded and didn't find anything. As annoying as it is, it's still more plausible that it was a mistake.

 

But boy what a whopper it was.

 

I'm not sure I buy a full out mistake either.

And I don't know if it was a blatant lie per say, but it makes sense that the administration was looking for pieces for the puzzle in order to bring into existence the specific image they wanted to see and communicate. Then they found the piece they were looking for in Curve Ball (for example).

 

This is how a lot of people succeed. Maybe its just human nature.

I see similar behaviour ALL of the time both in science and in corporate culture.....the selective culling of data and information to support the desired conclusion. I can't count how many times I've watched people throw out 90% of the information or data in order to support their preordained conclusion with the remaining 10%.

 

Although it may not be a blatant lie, I still consider it dishonest; whether it is in the corporate world, in science, in politics and in making war.

[iNow]

We're supposed to have the greatest intelligence service in the world, or we SHOULD given how much money is ripped from my angry fingers for it every April 15th. The idea that they would miss something so superficially obvious is really freaking annoying. We have every right to be mad and to want to hold people accountable for these mistakes, not to mention not wanting to repeat them.

Indeed. Even the worst intelligence service in the world should have caught something so painfully obvious.

 

 

In spite of all that, I still don't find it plausible that Bush lied.

It's possible that we will wind up arguing semantics here, but I really think that the source WOULD have been vetted more adequately and appropriately had there not been such a push to find evidence of WMDs. Our focus was so single minded that this simply fit with what we wanted to see and hear to justify a military action.

 

 

Some on the left use this as evidence, but it doesn't pass the stink test because he had to know his error would have been obvious the moment we invaded and didn't find anything. As annoying as it is, it's still more plausible that it was a mistake.

 

But boy what a whopper it was.

 

LOL. Again, if all you ever think about is a pair of naked breasts (insert WMDs for this analogy) then you will see naked breasts everywhere you look... in the clouds, in the shadows, in damned near everything... because that's what you want to see. It's sort of an unconscious version of the self-fulfilling prophecy. If we prime our mind with a desire to see or find something, chances are we will see or find that something in many places where it does not actually exist.

 

Is that lying? Well, no, but it's not a good way to lead and protect your populace either (unless, perhaps, you are looking for and desiring global peace, health, and all sorts of other beautiful hippy-esque notions).

 

 

 

 

Maybe its just human nature.

I see similar behaviour ALL of the time both in science and in corporate culture.....the selective culling of data and information to support the desired conclusion. I can't count how many times I've watched people throw out 90% of the information or data in order to support their preordained conclusion with the remaining 10%.

 

Although it may not be a blatant lie, I still consider it dishonest; whether it is in the corporate world, in science, in politics and in making war.

 

Agreed. It seems you beat me to the same point.

[Pangloss]

Actually I'll readily amend my position above -- I agree with DrDNA and iNow that it's not just a matter of mistakes, I think they also saw what they wanted to see and talked themselves into it. The exact degree of this may never be fully determined, but it's there somewhere, I'm convinced.

 

Bob Woodward's books on the Bush administration are remarkably informative. It's very rare that we get such an in-depth and insightful look into a current, working administration. I suspect those books will become the model for many if not most objective analyses of this administration for future "history books".

[ParanoiA]

Following your ostensible reference, Congress authorized the Iraq invasion, but that downplays the immense disconnect between what Congress thought they were authorizing and what Bush actually did. The Iraq war represented a culmination of lax regulation of executive war power by the legislative branch. I mean, don't get me wrong, Clinton was responsible for an increasing number of indiscretions in this regard, doing things like bombing Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan without Congressional approval (oh, and Kosovo, and I just heard there's again a possibility of war in the Balkans, centering around: you guessed it, Kosovo). But if we're out to level a country's controlling power, hunting down its leader as a war criminal, and replacing its government, I think the Congress needs to feel sure enough about it to write down that they "declare war" and eliminate any possible ambiguities of language.

 

If taking over a country, occupying its capital, disbanding its military, and hunting down its leader as a criminal isn't war, what is?

 

Excellent post. I don't give congress as much credit, in that I believe they were just as happy to shuck the responsibility of the particulars as Bush was to take it. If it works out, 'hey, we authorized it'; if it doesn't, 'hey, we didn't authorize that'. Passing off these war powers allows them to wage war without answering to the american people about the consequences of it.

 

LOL. Again, if all you ever think about is a pair of naked breasts (insert WMDs for this analogy) then you will see naked breasts everywhere you look... in the clouds, in the shadows, in damned near everything...

 

I read this and immediately envisioned a giant boob nuclear warhead descending from the clouds as men in the streets stare in a lost glow of awe...no missle defense system could beat that

[DrDNA]

I don't give congress as much credit, in that I believe they were just as happy to shuck the responsibility of the particulars as Bush was to take it. If it works out, 'hey, we authorized it'; if it doesn't, 'hey, we didn't authorize that'. Passing off these war powers allows them to wage war without answering to the american people about the consequences of it.

 

I agree. I believe that congress likes it this way, which is awfully pathetic.

 

 

Agreed. It seems you beat me to the same point.

 

Twisted minds think alike!

[bascule]

We're supposed to have the greatest intelligence service in the world, or we SHOULD given how much money is ripped from my angry fingers for it every April 15th. The idea that they would miss something so superficially obvious is really freaking annoying. We have every right to be mad and to want to hold people accountable for these mistakes, not to mention not wanting to repeat them.

 

Sounds like a severe case of confirmation bias

[Pangloss]

No sir, just a very slight one.