Pat Lang's insights on the LAT "Curveball Story"

Pat Lang posts occassionally at Larry Johnson's noquarter.typepad.com blog.

His bio reads: a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism" for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann (interview), CNN and Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room (interview), PBS's Newshour, NPR's "All Things Considered," (interview), and more (http://turcopolier.typepad.com).

Thought those of you who haven't seen his post at Booman Tribune would want to read it and perhaps comment.


Peace.

about pacifist being the only ones with doubts about Afghanistan we hit them because to hit Saudi arabia would cause our economy to collapse and they were they least ap to hit back on any major scale they had already been bludgeoned by the no de funked USSR

... the statement is his, not mine.

Welcome to DU.


Peace.

The LA Times article is fascinating. I am eating up any input about it from other sources.

piling up.

1. If foreigners pulled off 9-11 (which I doubt), the act was a criminal act, but they (our leaders) didn't want to be subject to courts and juries. They wanted war at that minute. They were pumped for war. They had THEIR motives for war. They needed a war to gain other benefits in addition to all the reasons that have come up including Israel, oil, euro-dollar, imperialism. They needed it immediately because they were ready. It was so convenient of those 19 men, some of whom are still alive, to hijack those aircraft when they did on such an ominous numbered day and when they already had terror practice sessions in progress on many levels, and when Cheney was bunkered down, and George was out of the way. (They admitted that they didn't want judges and juries. I believe it came out of Rumsfeld's mouth.)


2. It had to be Afghanistan to give the impression that they were pursuing bin Laden and to get in on the poppy trade. They didn't want to fight in the mountains because that was out of their element and they couldn't test out new toys meant for more flat land. Four wheeled things don't move over the mountains very well and they had a stockpile of old stuff they could use. It only takes legs and horses to get through the mountains and that was too slow to take down some of the faces on their 52 card deck right away for publicity sake. Besides, the bulk of our military are not trained to fight in mountains. (They admitted that they didn't want to fight in Afghanistan because of the mountains. I believe it came out of Rumsfeld's mouth.)

3. They trade with the Taliban. Or at least friends of Cheney trade with the Taliban. They couldn't cause too much war there.

4. Taking Afghanistan as proclaimed in the news by propaganda networks and going to Iraq meant that they could claim two countries for democracy, but with an underlying goal of taking two of the four or five they need to fulfill their commitment to Israel in partnership with the UK and with help from Canada and Australia.

Basically, they called a war when a courtroom was all that was needed. And no adults go off and declare a war without an assessment, but they do if they had it planned from before the famous day.

I knew that responsible people did not go off and declare a war as reactively as they did. Each day following brought us more questions than answers, but they kept planning, then fighting against all odds of approval and with a treasure trove of lies.

No, I never approved of the war. I believe in seeking and desiring peace which means talking. I believe in leaders acting as adults. I believe in children who need adults, not knee-jerkers, keeping peace for them so they can grow up peacefully. It can be done. We don't always have to have war. Too many people desire war.

I don't believe in the non-humility of my fellow countrymen and women and their refusal to look at our phony, hypocritical, delusional, and highly destructive policies. In fact, the hate we are experiencing has been carefully created to keep us at war with great profits for a few. But death, dismemberment, loss of sanity and immune systems is what we get for our neighbor kids and families. In addition to the extremes of the body, they suffer the loss of career dreams and broken families and families living in poverty and never-ending struggles with military government bureaucracy for simple rights. On both sides of the ocean.

Run for office. You have my vote.


Peace.

A Islamic Jihadist is uninterested in changing the minds of infidels very much or mostly which rule out 9/11 being a political statement in the true sense even for crazies. A massive hit like what was supposedly done on 9/11 would have to have much help from the inside and outside to be that successful. The history and facts don't support the motive or M.O.for them things to happen like that. Me really thinks all the propaganda to try to make it fact like it is officially explained is really suspect also. They want people to believe or give it up and neither one is happening

9/11 was a creation made in a vacuum looking for power, all the trends point that way

It was the "popular" war crime ... more "popular" than the invasion of Iraq, but a war crime nonetheless. Absolutely every cockamamie rationale for the invasion was pure bullshit.

<snip>

The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball's account. Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq's biological weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed in two years.

At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball's account even though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability before the war, punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion.

<snip>

But the CIA and the White House overlooked the holes in the story.

<snip>

U.S. and German officials feared that Ahmad Chalabi had coached Curveball after the defector said his brother had worked as a bodyguard for the controversial Iraqi exile leader. But they found no evidence.

Curveball "had very little contact with his brother," the BND supervisor said. "They are not close.''

More problematic were the three sources the CIA said had corroborated Curveball's story. Two had ties to Chalabi. All three turned out to be frauds.

Powell said he was never warned, during three days of intense briefings at CIA headquarters before his U.N. speech, that he was using material that both the DIA and CIA had determined was false.

<snip>

Tenet has denied receiving warnings that Curveball might be a fabricator. He declined to be interviewed for this report.

<snip>

Curveball was last in his engineering class, not first, as he had claimed. He was a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted.

Most important, records showed Curveball had been fired in 1995, at the very time he said he had begun working on bio-warfare trucks. A former CIA official said Curveball also apparently was jailed for a sex crime and then drove a Baghdad taxi.

<snip>



A clusterfuck in the White House ... beats a blowjob!

Representatives and their media court jesters - all I can think of is JUVENILE.

They are juvenile to think we will continue to believe their dozen reasons for going to war.

They were juvenile to think that they could get away with flimsy lies.

Their congressional leaders run the Houses like juveniles and put in juvenile performances. They contrive and manipulate at a juvenile level.

Their juvenile pimps and court jesters on the tv screen are bags of lies and propaganda worse than in the USSR because they make such a big pretense out of their dramatic and hilarious lies delivered with either bright smiles and obvious fakery.

Their born-again voting base are juvenile in attempting to push THEIR RELIGION down the throats of the world and rewrite the constitution for them (pushing their religion down the throats of their world applies to Moslem radicals, also.)

Their infinite think tank representatives lie transparently - an easy indicator.

Rumsfeld was a juvenile for not planning and preparing for ANY contingencies. That is what juveniles do.

Powell was juvenile to agreeing to participate in their world lie.

George is a number one juvenile who requires constant coaching, guidance, and propping up (except he is long past the benefits that normal juveniles gain from being propped up).

We are victims of juveniles and their wars and dictums.

Juvenile, in their case, is all about irresponsibility. And because of who they are - irresponsibility towards humanity.

It's time they are recognized by more people inthis country for who they are. We have not been represented well.

But, when this wave of juveniles resign there are, unfortunately, another wave of them groomed and being groomed to protect the born-again bible, corporate domination, military rule, news blackouts, submissive and controlled citizens, and the protection of Israel to the detriment of other humans.

I want to recommend it.

If you start your own thread with your post on how juvenile they are -- I think more people need to see them that way -- then I can recommend it :)

for pushing me. It's nice to know someone is in sync with my way of looking at our dilemma.

I kicked & recommended it, anyway!