Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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If this is how American intelligence works its really scary.
Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all - World Politics - World - The Independent

**A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
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“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi’s lies used to justify the Iraq war.

**He tries to defend his actions: “My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime’s oppression.”
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**The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence” by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
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But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true.** When it is put to him “we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie”, he simply replies: “Yes.”**

**US officials “sexed up” Mr Janabi’s drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell’s former chief of staff. “I brought the White House team in to do the graphics,” he says, adding how “intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy”.
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As for his former boss: “I don’t see any way on this earth that Secretary Powell doesn’t feel almost a rage about Curveball and the way he was used in regards to that intelligence.”

Another revelation in the series is the real reason why the FBI swooped on Russian spy Anna Chapman in 2010. Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama’s inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got “closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership… she got close enough to disturb us”.

The fear that Chapman would compromise a senior US official in a “honey trap” was a key reason for the arrest and deportation of the Russian spy ring of 10 people, of which she was a part, in 2010. “We were becoming very concerned,” he says. “They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.” Mr Figliuzzi refuses to name the individual who was being targeted.

Several British spies also feature in the programme, in the first time that serving intelligence officers have been interviewed on television. In contrast to the US intelligence figures, the British spies are cloaked in darkness, their voices dubbed by actors. BBC veteran reporter Peter Taylor, who worked for a year putting the documentary together, describes them as “ordinary people who are committed to what they do” and “a million miles” from the spies depicted in film. He adds: “What surprised me was the extent to which they work within a civil service bureaucracy. Everything has to be signed off… you’ve got to have authorisation signed in triplicate.”

Would-be agents should abandon any Hollywood fantasies they may have, says Sonya Holt at the CIA recruitment centre. “They think it’s more like the movies, that they are going to be jumping out of cars and that everyone carries a weapon… Yes we’re collecting intelligence but we don’t all drive fast cars. You’re going to be writing reports; you’re in meetings so it’s not always that glamorous image of what you see in the movies.”

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Cynthia L. Cooper: Serious Business: President Bush and VP Cheney Should Take the Stand on War Lies

Nine years ago, I encountered a man from Ohio on a flight from LaGuardia to the Akron-Canton Airport just as the Iraq War was starting. I wish I could talk to him again.

While sharing armrests but diverging on political leanings, we had a rather heated tête-à-tête about war in Iraq. He was firmly in favor of the war, and, in fact, wanted all the shock and awe the U.S. could deliver. He reasoned that Iraq was linked to al Qaeda and 9/11, and we couldn’t let them get away with it.

**I was fresh from the massive anti-war marches in New York and questioned the truth of any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, although President Bush and Vice President Cheney had drawn the association with regularity. My seatmate’s whole body leaned over to the right – literally. “I feel so sorry for you,” he said. “How cynical you must be to think that the president would lie.”
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Now, nine years later, I feel sorry for all of us. If only, like the Beatles’ Revolution 9, played backwards by disc jockeys of the day, we could rewind this tune. The false statements and lies that were used by President Bush and his team to drive the nation to war and occupation in Iraq have caused immeasurable heartbreak with thousands upon thousands of lost and damaged lives – U.S. and allies’ personnel, Iraqi civilians and military, international journalists and bystanders. The financial costs to the U.S. have reached $800 billion, according to the American Progress Center’s Iraq War Ledger, and the ticker is still going.

**Now we know that President Bush and his team lied repeatedly – investigative researchers at the Center for Public Integrity documented 935 **false statements about Iraq in the two years after 9/11 (memorialized in a song by Harry Shearer). More than mere harmless “pants on fire” posturing, these statements violate the federal criminal law.

In Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law, Plotted to Avoid Prosecution - and What We Can Do About It, I and co-author Elizabeth Holtzman describe a prima facie case for prosecuting President Bush and Vice President Cheney for conspiracy to deceive Congress under Sections 371 and 1001 of the federal criminal code.

Now that Bush and Cheney are now longer in office, the law can reckon with them on this and other outrageous incursions, such as wiretapping without warrants and torture. And prosecuting is a mighty good idea if we are to have a robust democracy down the road.

President Bush deceived Congress in two direct ways – one was a speech; the other was a letter sent to Congress, stipulating that he had met the prerequisites set by Congress in order to launch a war into Iraq.The speech came on January 28, 2003 : the State of the Union message personally delivered to both houses of Congress. Two-thirds of the speech was devoted to Iraq, and much of what the president said was simply false. It was here that President Bush asserted that Iraq was buying the uranium needed to build a nuclear weapon from a country in Africa. The “sixteen words,” later retracted, were known to be untrue. Their deceptiveness was unmasked when former AmbassadorJoseph Wilson wrote that he had traveled to Africa before the war at the behest of the Bush administration and had reported back that Iraq was not buying uranium.

(As told in Fair Game, Wilson’s statements spurred a vicious White House reaction targeting his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.)President Bush also said that Iraq was procuring aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons, but that matter had already been dashed as wrong by the International Atomic Energy Agency, noted Joby Warrick in the Washington Post. Finally, President Bush said, as my Ohio seatmate parroted, that “Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda,” but those connections that had been debunked immediately after 9/11 by counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke.
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Things only got worse in the weeks after the State of the Union. Congress, as the branch of government charged with declaring war, had set stipulations in October 2002 that President Bush had to satisfy before a war could be launched in Iraq. Rather than meet them, the president flouted them. That is, he lied. On March 18, 2003, the president literally signed, sealed and delivered on letters stating that a war in Iraq was a “necessary” action against those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Not only was war not necessary, Iraq had not aided in the attacks of 9/11.
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**The president’s letter also certified that Iraq posed a “continuing” threat to the U.S. As the president knew, it did not – it had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and none were in development. The president admitted this to Prime Minister Tony Blair before the war, according to leaked British memos obtained by international lawyer and author Philippe Sands.Piling on the false statements, the president stated in the letters, untruthfully, that “peaceful means” would not protect the U.S. But weapons inspectors were peacefully in Iraq and, while they had found no WMD, they were willing to continue to look.
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In addition, the president blew off the UN Security Council and refused to fulfill the requirement for a critical second resolution before going to war (it would have been vetoed). International lawyers objected vehemently to the rejection of this diplomatic process, and this has become an ongoing scandal in Britain, where the Iraq Inquiry has been taking testimony, much of it damning, on the start of the Iraq war.

Lying to the U.S. Congress is a federal crime under Section 1001 of the federal code, and working in concert with others to lie to Congress is prohibited by conspiracy laws under Section 371. These are not mothballed laws, but ones that are being used regularly to charge others with crimes. Former Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens was criminally charged for making a false statement to Congress in denying any use of steroids. The American League’s 2002 Most Valuable Player Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty in 2009 to making a false statement to Congress about his knowledge of other players’ use of banned substances. Of Tejada, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Durham said, “People have to know that when Congress asks questions, it’s serious business. And if you don’t tell the truth – and we can prove you haven’t told the truth – then there will be accountability.” Tejada was placed on probation, ordered to do 100 hours of community service and required to pay a fine of $5,000.

**Not even that modest level of accountability has been applied to President Bush. Lying about knowledge of steroids is obviously a blip on the scale compared to lying about 9/11, WMD and the need for war. We still have had no clear explanation of why President Bush and his team drove the nation to war and occupation in Iraq; in fact, in his book, Decision Points, the former president said that he had no apologies even though no WMD were found, and he thought the world was better off for the war. He was completely oblivious to the suffering of so many who lost loved ones or were injured, displaced, tortured and permanently harmed.
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We need to put any future president on notice – now – that lying to Congress about the need for war is serious business. Prosecution under the criminal laws of the United States is the best way to hold President Bush accountable. I’d like to find that man from Ohio; I think he’ll agree – we can’t let him “get away with it.”

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

So what do you guys think in this matter, are the conspiracy theorists vindicated (at least on the Iraq front for now)? its amazing to which lengths this country can go to achieve its strategic interests.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

United States government are bunch of liars they even shoot their own presidents who start to think for themselves.

You think they could care less if 100,000 + non americans died for the US economic benefit.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

If you guys think that Eyraqs WMD & ALqeda are an amreekan lie and NOT the biggest threat to amreeka then you need to have your head examined.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

There was never any doubt that Iraq didn't have WMDs ... every step of the way including the UN stated that it was a baseless intervention that went on in Iraq ... This man "curveball" allegedly speaking out is only being allowed to speak out because it serves the US purpose ... letting out delayed "conspiratorial truths" has some 'positive' side effects for the deceivers ...

a) It makes it appear to the public that fairness eventually wins and it satisfies people to hear the truth - hence pacifies them.
b) It's too late to do anything about it
c) It makes people focus on the symptoms of the problem rather than the root cause - they seek rectification with the puppets rather than the puppet masters.
d) It can also shock the onlookers to assume a state of awe in front of the architects.

All the while the whole reason why such tactics are used anyway is because they themselves are afraid and have become slaves of their own worldly desires ... The last thing they want is to be taken to be just another group of humans, fallible and clumsy like us all ... but you see we have always known there is no Wisdom and no Power except that Allah (SWT) is its Source and Bestower ... and in that we should take extreme comfort !!!

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

The thing is that many people thought during and before the "Eyeraq War" that it was illegal and based upon lies but those allegations were brushed aside as conspiracy theories. Slowly the truths of Eyeraq war are coming out. In addition to this the Americans launched attacks on "Alqaeda" and destroyed two countries, when will we come to know about the truth of 911? As for them destroying two countries were easier as compared to conducting the trial of the alleged masterminds. Now since it meets their interests their media is talking about Iran, alqaeda and taleban.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Shouldnt Bush be declared a terrorist and prosecuted for the killing of 100000 people now? If he lied on Iraq can we consider him credible on his claims about 911, as within a few hours they announced Alqaeda as the culprits. And everything that we have been hearing most of the time is one sided stories from the American side.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Americans, Britishers, everyone knew that there is no such thing as WMD in Iraq, but they had to invade Iraq for 'other' purposes, they just used this liar as 'evidence' just like they used another liar in 1990s Gulf War where someone claimed that Iraqi army was killing babies in Kuwaiti hospitals etc.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Who will punish those liars now? And what credibility does Bush now have regarding the 911 truth?

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

honestly, we dont need a confession to know that iraq war was a lie, millions marched in antiwar protests, because most could see right through. If you couldn't see this at the time, then there are 2 things gone wrong, your source of info is crap, or your brain cells were lacking. simple.

The same applies now, re: iran nukes issue. If you seriously believe the nukes crap, you need to change your news source (rt.com is a good start), or you need your head checked. This is the information age after all, you can get alternative sources in seconds. There is simply no excuse for such retartednes, especially when millions of lives are stake.

This is not a non issue and we all have a moral and shari' responsibility to do the right thing. Neither indifference nor ignorance is an excuse that will stand, either n this world, or the next.

This is Dajjal at his best.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Have some faith. Their time is up.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

I guess you guys don't follow the news because that fact that Iraq never had WMD's is old news, like 7 years old. And of course America lied to further its national interests, Pakistan, India, China, Russia, would all do the same.

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

It amazes me to see u and few others here amazed/surprised!!!

..... and if Iran had Nukes no one and i mean really no one would issue a threat like now every gamma, maja is doing ..... north Korea is a fine example ..... Pakistan is a fine example

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Don't forget most Muslims Countries are "in bed" with ur socalled Dajjal

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

so..?

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Blaming amreeka is one thing .... naming/stating the helping lot all along shouldn't be forgotten ;) ..... unfortunatly the Muslim population isn't completly innocent in this regard ..... for those who could/can elect their leaders ....

but what do they do ????? they vent their anger and wrath at each others ..... countless examples available

This is the real tragedy of this partly self-created mess

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

.I agree, these people are not innocent... but they were not involved in misleading the world on Iraq. ...

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

yes u r right .... i didn't want to derail the thread :D

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Re: Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

At that time they were saying it was faulty intelliegence, nothing of this sort that they were lying to their own people and the world (by manufacturing lies). And this also puts a lot of question marks on NATO countries that they blindly followed America without any proof.