Curveball's motive, CIA officials said, was not to start a war. He simply was seeking a German visa.
You would think that there would be some serious repercussions for "mishandling" intelligence used to start a war.
Then again it's not like this is really news (dated 4/2004)
A different angle previously discussed here on Metafilter
posted by threehundredandsixty on Nov 20, 2005 - 12 comments

They've found those WMDs! Well, not quite. Just chemicals that eventually could be turned into weapons. But what's interesting is that this chem lab dates from AFTER the US invasion.
posted by John of Michigan on Aug 14, 2005 - 37 comments

A distinction between “old” and “new” wars is vital. “Old wars” are wars between states where the aim is the military capture of territory and the decisive encounter is battle between armed forces. “New wars”, in contrast, take place in the context of failing states. They are wars fought by networks of state and non-state actors, where battles are rare and violence is directed mainly against civilians, and which are characterised by a new type of political economy that combines extremist politics and criminality... I argue in this article that the United States viewed its invasion of Iraq as an updated version of “old war” that made use of new technology. The US failure to understand the reality on the ground in Iraq and the tendency to impose its own view of what war should be like is immensely dangerous and carries the risk of being self-perpetuating. It does not have to be this way.
Iraq: the wrong war - Mary Kaldor writes of what was happening in pre-invasion Iraq, what happened thereafter and what the alternatives were. Well, there is always Exit strategy: Civil war. And on that, note this: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk--a city from which, I am afraid, we will hear more and more as time goes by.
posted by y2karl on Jun 15, 2005 - 20 comments

Iraq's WMD capability was essentially destroyed in 1991, according to the report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.
posted by kirkaracha on Oct 6, 2004 - 28 comments

Colin Powell in Four-letter Neo-con 'crazies' Row Perhaps Colin should have said they were cheney crazies.
posted by rough ashlar on Sep 14, 2004 - 30 comments

Iraq's Arsenal Was Only On Paper
posted by FormlessOne on Jan 7, 2004 - 52 comments

Senators were told Iraqi weapons could hit U.S. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. If this is true, is he in trouble for saying it?
posted by bas67 on Dec 17, 2003 - 32 comments

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything." So says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Now, who still believes the P(L)OTUS?
posted by acrobat on Nov 10, 2003 - 50 comments

"Never before have so many stories been created to sell a war," says Sam Gardiner, author of a new report {.pdf, here's an html cache} that explains how the world was deceived.
posted by Domain Master 666 on Oct 17, 2003 - 35 comments

“Various people would laugh at various times [during Powell’s speech] because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything -- had no meaning,"
posted by specialk420 on Oct 15, 2003 - 62 comments

Robert Scheer on the missing WMDs, claims of Iraqi exiles, and how Bush is getting away with it all. Scheer: Oops. There are no weapons of mass destruction after all. That's the emerging consensus of the second team of weapons sleuths commanded by the U.S. in Iraq, as reported last week in the Los Angeles Times. The 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group found what the first wave of U.S. military experts and the United Nations inspectors before them discovered — nada.
posted by skallas on Sep 3, 2003 - 37 comments

"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." So are there WMDs in Iraq or not? ABC is running a story that says that the Bush administration was not primarily concerned with any threat from Iraq, but with making an example of them to other evildoers. Discuss.
posted by eateneye on Apr 28, 2003 - 76 comments

Robert Scheer on the so far non-existant Iraqi WMDs. If the President went to war without real evidence of a threat would this be considered an impeachable offense as Scheer suggests? What's Ken Starr been up to lately?
posted by skallas on Apr 25, 2003 - 86 comments

SADDAM AIDE SURRENDERS Saddam Hussein's chief weapons adviser has surrendered to the US military. US officials had described Lieutenant General Amir al-Saadi as the person they most wanted to speak to about Iraq's weapons programmes. Now we will know about WMD or the integrity and effectiveness of the give-inspections-a -chance folks. Any bets to be placed?
posted by Postroad on Apr 12, 2003 - 42 comments

The Push For War (by Anatol Lieven). "The most surprising thing about the Bush Administration's plan to invade Iraq is not that it is destructive of international order; or wicked, when we consider the role the US (and Britain) have played, and continue to play, in the Middle East; or opposed by the great majority of the international community; or seemingly contrary to some of the basic needs of the war against terrorism. It is all of these things, but they are of no great concern to the hardline nationalists in the Administration....The most surprising thing about the push for war is that it is so profoundly reckless....What we see now is the tragedy of a great country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent historical achievements and immense energies, which has become a menace to itself and to mankind."

Excecutive summary: Lord Acton foretold all fruit of "military superiority".
posted by fold_and_mutilate on Oct 4, 2002 - 44 comments

U.S. helped Iraq start bioweapons program

"I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs,'' said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector. "But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."

" -isn't iraq just another case of blowback and is anyone asking what the next round of "blowback" will be if we go in again?
posted by specialk420 on Sep 30, 2002 - 35 comments

Agency disavows report on Iraq arms "The International Atomic Energy Agency says that a report cited by President Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was 'six months away' from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist. 'There's never been a report like that issued from this agency,' Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman, said yesterday in a telephone interview from the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria."
posted by owillis on Sep 29, 2002 - 52 comments

Scott Ritter on Weapons Inspection, Chemical, Biological and Nuclear WMD Why hasn't the American media picked up on these issues that are being put forth by Scott Ritter? Is Mr. Ritter correct in his assessment of Iraqi capabilities?
posted by FullFrontalNerdity on Sep 27, 2002 - 44 comments

Finally, finally, finally!! Someone in the mainstream media is finally asking some questions. Lots of people (here and abroad) have known about this book for some time. I think it deserves some checking into.
posted by bas67 on Jan 8, 2002 - 77 comments

From a piece in the NYTimes today, Home Front Is Minefield for President: "The lesson we're learning," one administration official said today, "is that you can bomb the wrong place in Afghanistan and not take much heat for it. But don't mess up at the post office."

Leave it to the White House to come away with exactly the wrong interpretation. But the facts are there, too -- most Americans are more concerned about the (relatively slight) risk of getting Anthrax than the rather significant risk that, if we screw up in Afghanistan, we might lose the current coalition against terrorism, Bin Laden, and any hope for "homeland security" for a long time to come....
posted by mattpfeff on Oct 25, 2001 - 12 comments