U.S. Suspects It Received False Iraq Arms Tips

[TheWebHead]

Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

...

"We were prisoners of our own beliefs," said a senior U.S. weapons expert who recently returned from a stint with the survey group. "We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions."

more...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-wmd2...

[Democrats unite]

"master of denial and deception"

I thought that was reserved for Bushco?

[lanlady]

1. only one suitable reaction to this

[Caution]

2. Now this story should have some legs dammit!

Here's a government expert saying what we've been saying all along...That we were asking hussein to prove a negative which is not possible and that we were listening to right-wiong idealogues (Chalabi) who were telling us something untrue because it served the political will of the neo-conservatives, who never questioned for a minute that maybe these defectors might (ya think?) have an agenda of their own!

[Paschall]

3. "Bogus defectors"?

Are they now trying to tell us they think Chalabi was really born in Schenectedy? Funny, I thought filtering false leads from true ones was part of an intelligency agency's basic job. Stupid me.

[Sinistrous]

13. Yeah, me too.

The word "corroboration" keeps popping into my head. But what do I know.

[Ernesto]

40. Yeah, that's the ticket!

That Evil Saddam tricked us! It's not chimp's fault that the WMD evidence was cooked. NOW that evil-doing Saddam won't be around to trick us anymore! Hell, now we don't even need to look for them gal-durned WMD! And the little prince "lived happily ever after". The End.

[MaineDem]

4. Here we go

This is their defense. "We were told these things but we were lied to." Duhhhhh.

How disgusting!

[Paschall]

6. Meet the "Liaisons Dangereuses" Administration

It's not my fault.
It's not my fault.
It's not my fault.

[Dhalgren]

15. Sounds sort of like

what Sen. Kerry says.

[paulk]

18. what Kerry says?

I don't understand your post.

[Dhalgren]

29. Kerry said

that his support for the war was based on the lies that were told to him and the congress.

[jayfish]

32. The Last Time I Checked...

the congress didn't have multiple intelligence services available to check the "evidence". Not that it matters anyway because we created the intelligence. Remember the satellite photos, the video of an unmanned drone being tested (and it was a Mig-21 not a 1/4 scale balsa kit), the taped telephone conversations, the way-cool PowerPoint slides?. But we have short memories and will buy this new BS hook, line and sinker.

Jay

[TahitiNut]

23. I shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

That anyone would lie to an intelligence agency!

[emad]

5. This one's got Bush Sr's thumbprints all over it...

...when it comes to planting disinformation and mastery of denial and deception, there's no one in 20th/21st century american history more adept or tunnel visioned than this former CIA chief. Saddam was merely his stooge, BCCI his bagman, Osama his teaser. Jeb and Dumbo must be SOOOO proud.....

[DrBB]

7. One of the great "No duh!" statements of all time

"when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions." Naw, really? Ya think? Gosh, that's just so surprising!

"It is up to those who deny Saddam had WMD to say where they are!"
--A. Fleischer

[LizW]

8. This headline -- Geez, ya think?

Wasn't it pretty common knowledge a year ago that Chalabi was leading the neo-cons down a path? Wasn't it known that they embraced him because he told them what they wanted to hear? Geez.

[DarkPhenyx]

9. Gee? Ya Think?

Shit happy! Let's see...how many people were saying this months before the watr? Ummmmmmmm, the fine people here at DU. Other "non-bogus" defectors who siply weren't telling you the stories you wanted to hear. Your own fucking intelligence agents!

Jesus H. Christ! OK, I'm supplying the Louisville Sluggers. Who's up for a new march on Washington? There are some intell "experts" and spokespeople that need an ass whoppin! Or in teh immortal words of the Joker, "This town NEEDS an enema!"

[lindashaw]

10. Goodness gracious, I figured this out last year, and I don't know anything

[OKNancy]

12. LOL my reaction too

Here I sit in the middle of the USA, a middle-aged lady, with just a B.S. degree in Social Studies and I figured that out.

Can they really be that stupid?

[leftchick]

28. no they are not that stupid...

but the stupid Amurkins will eat this shit up!

[0007]

11. We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception.

And the US is the Master spinmaster of spinmaster.

.

[Spentastic]

14. Arghhhhh

I need to reinforce my forehead. I keep having to slap it.

[deutsey]

16. When they make a movie of all this

it should be called "A Crock o' Shit Now". (With apologies to MAD Magazine).

[moondust]

17. Oh yes, the unwitting fools. NOT.

They wanted to believe.

[gratuitous]

19. Golly, if only someone had warned the poor dears!

There they were, being led down the garden path, and nobody (nobody, I tell you!) tried to warn them. It's just so sad. Can't really hold anyone responsible in a situation like that. Try to do better next time. To the families of the 300 service men and women killed so far, uh, "sorry."

To the families of the thousands of Iraqis killed, uh, no hard feelings? Our bad? Oops, you know? Don't hold it against us. We feel terrible about it now, so just shut it, okay? No, we're not going to submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC. What's done is done! So knock it off. Well, if you're gonna be like that, maybe we should just send the planes out for another bombing run.

[ProfessorGAC]

20. Ah! I See! Once Again, It Was Someone Else's Fault.

Party of personal responsibility. What a laugh!

"We didn't lied. We just believed some liars." So, that makes the invasion ok, then?
The Professor

[Briar]

21. What a piece of spin!

According to this story, it was Saddam Hussein who deliberately misled our brave and noble spies and their honest masters. It was his fault! (I bet Bush wishes he could blame all these revelations that we were lied to on the BBC, as Blair has done.)

"As evidence, officials say former Iraqi operatives have confirmed since the war that Hussein's regime sent "double agents" disguised as defectors to the West to plant fabricated intelligence. In other cases, Baghdad apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips about weapons production and storage sites.

....

Hussein's motives for such a deliberate disinformation scheme may have been to bluff his enemies abroad, from Washington to Tehran, by sending false signals of his military might. Experts also say the dictator's defiance of the West, and its fear of his purported weapons of mass destruction, boosted his prestige at home and was a critical part of his power base in the Arab world."

[RaulGroom]

22. Foul play Suspected in Hoffa Disappearance

Dick Clark May Have Had Plastic Surgery
WWe Wrestlers Probed in Fraud Case
Earth Shows Signs of Revolving Around Sun
Bush May Be Less Intelligent Than Clinton
Study: Nazi Party Having Trouble Reaching Out to Minorities

I could go on all day here.

[ewagner]

24. ROFLMA n/t

[robbedvoter]

25. Hans Blix is shaking his head - he said "info was caca

BEFORE we went to war. And so did the millions in "ficus groups" I guess the word is OOPS!


Or maybe: D'uh!

[JohnyCanuck]

26. Saddam didn't just fool Dubya. He fooled God too.

Not only did Saddam fool the empty headed, flaming idiot WhistleAss (no big achievement there) but now it looks like he fooled God Almighty too. Remember from the lips of WhistleAss himself, it was God that passed on the orders that Saddam had to be taken out.

Looks like omnipotence isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

[PurityOfEssence]

35. Good point!

So god's a total sucker too, huh? That explains a lot.

Let's add this one to the big list of questions Junior needs to be asked in public. I want to hear him answer whether non-believers can be as moral as and are deserving of the same respect and legal protection as believers. Let's watch the right scream if he makes the politic answer...

[arcane1]

37. yep, he's just THAT evil! We had to take him out

based on his lies

lies are bad, m'kay? That's why we blame them on others

is this country being run by a bunch of brain-dead monkeys?

don't answer that

[Braden]

27. This Just in

President Kennedy is Dead.

[Riptide]

30. This is definitely their new set of talking points...

I was flipping through the channels this morning and paused on Fascists & Friends on Fox. Well, they were going on and on about how the "double agents" fed Americans false information.

The dumb blonde weather guy even said that if it was proven to be true, "President Bush is off the hook, and Tony Blair is off the hook". They agreed that it was all the intelligence agencies fault.

[bif]

31. Well no shit Sherlock!

The defectors had nothing to lose and everything to gain by lying about WMDs. And this administration was played for suckers. I read about this about a year and a half ago. These guys told the Bushites exactly what they wanted to hear.

[ElementaryPenguin]

33. And Saddam did this so that we would destroy his palaces, kill his sons,

Dismember his government, occupy his country, and force him to live in squalor, perhaps having had plastic surgery and dressing in drag, right???? RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRight! This may be an even more insane story than the Poindexter Terror - Assassination betting board!!!! Wonder why Blair hasn't used this brilliant explanation/defense yet??

[peterh]

34. My letter-to-the-editor this morning….

Re: U.S. suspects it received false Iraq arms tips (Aug. 28)

If it wasn’t for the fact that so many people have died in Iraq, this comedy of errors and excuses, by a misadministration where the “buck” is constantly being passed, would indeed be laughable. But the reality of the situation is that families have lost loved ones…on both sides of the fence….and for what? Iraq has never been linked to al Qaeda, the Taliban and most importantly, 9/11.

The doctrine of Pre-emptive attack is about as ethical and legal as someone shooting his neighbor because he thinks the neighbor may have a gun in his house and harbor ill feelings.

Bush once quipped at a Washington dinner, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you have to concentrate on" and clearly he has.

[Spazito]

36. Good letter!

*

[peterh]

39. Thanks

[berry]

38. Very interesting....

I wish the reporter had named the 3 defectors (only 3?! the whole policy rested on 3?! people?) who supplied the false info. I don't think these 3 were just quiet passers-on of "information." Number 3 is (I *think*) the guy who testified at Biden's hearing--the one who was presented as a high-ranking nuclear expert (a claim disputed even at that time). I'd like to know WHEN the intelligence agencies "dismissed ... as a fraud." I suspect it wasn't until after the invasion, but I don't know. And if it was before he testified at that hearing, it would be a scandal (among scandals).

<<Chalabi, who now sits on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad, has said his group provided the Defense Intelligence Agency with three defectors who had personal knowledge of Hussein's illicit weapons programs.

<1> One, an Iraqi engineer, told the DIA in 2001 that he knew the location of biological weapons. However, no bioweapons have been found at the sites he named.

<2> A second defector from Chalabi's group described what he said were mobile labs that could produce several hundred tons of biowarfare agents per year. The CIA has concluded that two trucks found in northern Iraq after the war were probably designed for biowarfare, but outside experts have sharply disputed those claims.

<3> U.S. intelligence authorities dismissed the third defector, who claimed to be an expert in nuclear isotope separation, as a fraud.>>

I also found this article interesting because I have thought for a long time that US foreign policy has been deformed by the dependence on the "expertise" of defectors and refugees/immigrants from many countries that we called enemies. Immigration for 50 years favored people fleeing from Communism over those whose motives were merely "economic." So there was always a built-in bias among our "experts" on the evils of our enemies. I'm not saying that they had nothing to offer, but over the years, one would think that someone in the intelligence world would have recognized the danger of trusting their views unquestioningly. Shouldn't we have learned this lesson a LONG time ago--from the Cubans? from the Soviet defectors? And it's not just money or a visa, these people have a world view and an agenda--of course they do. But in a way, they are being used too--by the people in our government who also have an agenda--one that matches that of the "experts" whose credentials make them useful propaganda tools.

There are a lot of tantalizing details in this article--1) why is the CIA continuing to stand by its claims about the mobile labs? 2) How did the Iraq Survey Group get through 30 million pages of documents in this amount of time? (do we suddenly have armies of language specialists? Iraqis? how was it done?) 3) If members of the ISG have agreed to not blab in order to get security clearances, can they get around that by just talking to reporters "on condition of anonymity"? Sounds fishy--probably this proves that they have been told to get out there and tell this to the media, a PR campaign. Kay and Dayton, we're told, were not made available for interviews--but these blabbers, apparently, were.

Several people were interviewed (or gave a press conference? in which case other news stories should be forthcoming) and each one said something slightly different (for verisimilitude? to make it seem less like PR talking points?). But I think this quotation sums up the message:

"To me, there's no difference between finding a warehouse full of aerial bombs with nerve gas and a pencil-and-paper plan that will allow them to use their existing production capabilities to produce those same weapons in one week's time,"

Nothing new here, really. Same-old-same-old, repackaged. Still, the more they talk, the more they give themselves away, the more their arguments can be picked apart.