Kerry : Why Did the Admin.Base a Key Justification for War on Discredited

[maddezmom]

PRESS RELEASE:

Kerry Campaign: Why Did the Admin. Base a Key Justification for War on Discredited Claims by a Lying Iraqi Defector?

Sun May 16, 2:57 PM ET

To: National Desk, Political Reporter


Contact: Chad Clanton or Phil Singer, 202-712-3000, both of John Kerry (news - web sites) for President


WASHINGTON, May 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by John Kerry for President:


On Meet the Press today, one of Sec. Powell's aides tried to cut short his interview after Tim Russert raised questions about "Curveball," a now discredited CIA (news - web sites) source. The Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had built mobile bioweapons factories capable of killing thousands while staying a step ahead of arms inspectors was based primarily on information from "Curveball," an Iraqi defector who lied to CIA weapons inspectors and may have been coached to give false intelligence to support unproven American theories about Iraq (news - web sites)'s weapons capabilities, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times ("Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case for War," 3/28/04). Despite serious questions raised about the veracity of the information, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) as recently as January cited the dubious "germ trucks" as "conclusive" proof of Iraqi WMD programs.


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"This is the one that's damning ... This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward." - David Kay, Former CIA Chief Weapons Inspector


"The CIA May Have Inadvertently Conjured Up and Then Chased a Phantom Weapons System." An internal CIA report from 1992 that suggested that the Iraqi regime could have hidden mobile germ weapon factories in modified vans or trucks - an idea that a U.N. weapons inspector said "didn't make sense from a technical or a security viewpoint" - sparked a number of intelligence false alarms in the mid- to late-1990s, ranging from faulty intelligence to inconclusive raids. Then, in a December 1997 meeting with Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi aimed at recruiting Chalabi's intelligence network, former U.N. chief inspector Scott Ritter "outlined the gaps in our understanding of the Iraqi program, including the mobile bioweapons labs. Basically, we gave them a shopping list."


"We Didn't Find Anything." Soon after Ritter asked Chalabi for help, "a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army." The BND, Germany's intelligence service, "repeatedly rejected CIA requests to meet 'Curveball,' saying it needed to protect its source. But the Germans gave the CIA their thick file on the defector, including highly detailed information describing the layout of the trucks, specifying locations, and naming names. In November 2002, U.N. weapons inspectors "checked every site Curveball had identified, as well as others picked by U.S. intelligence. ... 'We didn't find anything,'" a former weapons inspector said.

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more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=669&ncid=669&e=2&u=/usnw/20040516/pl_usnw/kerry_campaign__why_did_the_admin__base_a_key_justification_for_war_on_discredited_claims_by_a_lying_iraqi_defector_104_xml

[wubbathompson]

1. Finally growing the things we men have called BALLS

Now keep them and use them every day.

[7th_Sephiroth]

2. the answer to why is simple

the bush admin were grasping at straws ever since they took power for ANY excuse to go to iraq, they prolly wold have accepted and use something like saddam was the school bully that smacked kids on the playground with thier own hand saying "stop hittin yourself"

[Gloria]

3. Happily, Kerry seems to be moving toward the Clark attitude, rather

than the other way around. This is a key point, because Clark isn't going to have to whore himself to be in the VP race. And, frankly, I think in the end he will be the VP nominee and will be able to do it without selling out on his original positions. (I don't think he would even consider doing it if would have to really sell out anyway)

[unblock]

4. cheney probably told him exactly what to say

or at least let it be known what they wanted to hear.

one thing is clear, they certainly didn't want to hear the truth. they wanted to hear an excuse for war, whether true or not.