Bush Bite #3 - 16 Sep 2004
Intelligence failures, right.
The Republican-led Senate intelligence commission on 9/11 recently released a report more-or-less depicting the president as a naive victim of "intelligence failures" when it came to connecting Iraq to al-Qaida and WMDs.
Remember Colin Powell's "mobile biological weapon labs?" It turns out that the sole source of the claim of roaming tractor-trailers of death was an Iraqi defector code-named "Curve Ball." It didn't matter that Curve Ball was also an alcoholic.
Amongst the evidence released by the Senate intelligence committee is this e-mail exchange between the senior military officer who interviewed Curve Ball and his immediate superior.
OFFICER: I do have a concern with the validity of the information based on 'CURVE BALL' having a terrible hangover the morning [of his debriefing]. I agree it was only a one-time interaction. However, he knew he was to have a "debriefing" on that particular morning but tied one on anyway. These issues, in my opinion, warrant further inquiry, before we use the information as the backbone of one of our major findings of the existence of a continuing Iraqi "biological weapons" program!
SUPERVISOR: Greetings... Come on over (or I'll come over there) and we can hash this out. As I said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about. However, in the interest of Truth, we owe somebody a sentence or two of warning, if you honestly have reservations.
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