WHIG party

Talk about your blasts from the past.  The Carpetbagger Report alerts us to the fact that Iraqi scientist and intelligence source "Curveball", one of the coterie of singing stooges recruited by Ahmed Chalabi to fool the US into invading Iraq has surfaced in Germany.  Isn't it nice to hear from old friends?

"Curveball", as you may recall, provided United States Intelligence operatives with crucial (i.e., "completley false") information regarding Saddam Hussein's mobile weapons labs, his stockpiles of nukes, and imminent plans to attack the US, and also provided the backbone of Colin Powell's now-discredited presentation to the UN.

Oh, yeah.  That guy. 

From Carpetbagger:

I mention this, of course, because ABC News has tracked down “Curveball,” the Iraqi defector who told U.S. officials bogus stories about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent arsenal, including WMD, “mobile biological weapons labs,” aluminum tubes, etc. Curveball’s claims were the centerpiece of Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations, the crux of which has since been exposed as false. In this new ABC report, the network turns its attention back to Drumheller.

“People died because of this,” said Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of European operations at the CIA, who has written about it in a new book, “On the Brink.” “All off this one little guy who all he wanted to do was stay in Germany.” Drumheller says he personally redacted all references to Curveball material in an advance draft of the Powell speech.

“We said, ‘This is from Curveball. Don’t use this,’” Drumheller says…. Drumheller also says he met personally with the then-deputy director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, to raise questions about the reliability of Curveball, well before the Powell speech.

“And John said, ‘Oh my, I hope not. You know this is all we have,’ and I said, ‘This can’t be all we have.’ I said, ‘There must be another, there must be something else.’ And he said, ‘No, this is really the only tangible thing we have.’”

In other words, even though this source was thoroughly discredited and his testimony proven to be suspicious at best, the administration, lacking any other justification for hostilities against Iraq, used the bogus intel anyway.  "This is all we have"?!  Didn't anybody think that might have been a great reason to sit back and think for a moment before we launched a war?  I mean, how hard is it to say, "Huh.  Well, the only source we have that indicates that Saddam has an active nuclear weapons program has been proven to be an unreliable fraud.  Maybe an invasion can wait until we know a little more."?

But nooooooooo.  They sent Colin Powell right up there in front of God, the United Nations, and everybody to present a speech that they knew was patently false.

And Colin Powell was the alleged "conscience" of this administration?!  HUH?!

Dude, a bunch of dogs playing poker could have planned and executed this war better than the Bush administration.  This has just been one cascading set of errors after another, all built on lies and the Bush Dynasty's family vendetta against Saddam Hussein and a deep and abiding lust for all that sweet, sweet, black, luscious Iraqi oil.  Mmmmmm, ooiiiiilllll.

I remember when the few of us who dared to stand up against the war in 2003 kept saying, "No blood for oil!" and all the Wingnuts spat back in our faces, "You stupid liberals don't know what you're talking about!  This is not about the oil!  It's about 9/11 and the safety of Americans both here and abroad!  It's about standing up to the terrorists!  You're just a treasonous little traitor, aren't you?  You want more 9/11's!  You may as well have killed those heroic men and women of the New York City police and fire departments yourself!"

Goddammit.  I think the most frustrating thing about the last six or so years is that the people we've been up against have been so motherfucking stupid.  You've got your Michael Ledeens and your O'Bierne clan, and your Michelle ("Cavewoman") Malkins and Hugh Hewitts, well…if brains were TNT, the NeoCon cabal wouldn't be able to assemble enough between them to blow their nose, let alone win any kind of Decisive Ideological Conflict of Our Time.

Please tell me it's going to end soon.

Back to Carpetbagger:

Admittedly, this isn’t entirely new, but once in a while, I’ll still hear someone claim that there were “intelligence failures,” which led the White House to get the entire basis for the war wrong. What this explanation neglects to mention is that these “failures” were practically intentional. Officials had a source, they were told the source was unreliable, but they believed what they wanted to believe.

As Kevin Drum summarized, “They knew Saddam didn’t have a nuclear program. They knew he didn’t have mobile bio labs. They knew he didn’t have drones. They knew.”

History will not be kind.

No, it most certainly will not.  But frankly, I'd like to see some of that hard, cold, unforgiving assessment of our current situation brought to bear on the Bush administration now, right NOW. 

Fortunately, I'm not holding my breath.

COULTER UPDATE:  Nine papers have dumped her column now.  Keep those cards and letters coming, kids!!

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