Misblog

Originally Published January 01, 2008: Last Updated November 08, 2009; Last Republished November 08, 2009:

Bob Dorgin’s new book Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War, Random House, 2007 furthers our understanding of how Curveball’s1 data were used, misused, and manipulated by our Executive to mislead both Congress and the public. However, it is absurdity blurring into fantasy to imply Curveball played any role in our Executive’s prefixed and predetermined decision to attack Iraq. Curveball, like many others, was simply another manipulated mannequin in the mirage our Executive constructed, misrepresented, and maintained in the public’s Iraq war window2.

Book in WorldCat

Unfortunately, not enough data and documents are, yet, publicly available to understand the Executive’s decision prefixing and predetermining the attack on Iraq. Or exactly how that prefixed and predetermined decision continually blew back into the intelligence. We do know that it created a disastrous and catastrophic self-confirming, self-sustaining, self-fulfilling, and self-destructive loop of self-deception.

The tsunami size consequences of creating and sustaining that loop are continuing to radiate and ripple from the Iraq epicenter today (UPDATED 01/05/2008 NYT, U.S. Considering New Covert Push Within Pakistan. Pakistan is nearing criticality!).

Much remains to be written but Dorgin’s book makes clear that without the active participation of then CIA Director George Tenet (and others) the disastrous, catastrophic, and destructive feedback loop, begun by the Executive would not have been sustainable.

It is understandable why our Executive would reward such participation by awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom, however laughable and Kafkaesque! It is less understandable why anybody with a gram of integrity or credibility would accept it³?

It is simultaneously instructive, encouraging, and discouraging to note that many voices in our intelligence community were muted, muzzled, and ignored to enable our Executive to construct, misrepresent, and maintain the public’s Iraq War window. It is also encouraging that many in the intelligence community worked harder than an Olympic hammer thrower to shatter those misrepresentations and the mirage in the public’s Iraq war window.

Hopefully, next time the Executive begins to construct any mirage everybody will immediately stand and say “you can kiss my ass in Macy’s window” ⁴ and not wait for the window to implode (some evidence exists that that has already happened with the Executive and Iran)!

All the documentation concerning the disastrous, catastrophic, and destructive Iraq War debacle must be immediately made public, including the failed search for Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons⁵. It is imperative that we completely understand its beginning, prosecution, implosive shattering into a thousand fragments⁶, and end.

Web:

• UPDATED 11/30/2009 UPI, Report: Cab driver source of weapons claim.

  ...and you thought relying on "curveball" as a source was wacky—how about "curve-cabby"!

  These stories leave the impression that assertions of "state secrets" often shield reliance on wacky intelligence and sources that wouldn't survive public scrutiny for a nanosecond.

• UPDATED 11/30/2009 UPI, U.S. set eyes on Iraq early, inquiry hears

-----notes-----

1. Curveball is the cryptonym used by the CIA for the Iraqi undergraduate chemical engineer seeking asylum in Germany after working for a short period on an Iraq agricultural seed washing project.

Curveball was just another mannequin manipulated by our Executive in its efforts to ensure the public’s war window represented and presented their prefixed and predetermined decision to begin the Iraq War.

2. The leaked British “Downing Street Memos” made this point very early on. Richard Dearlove, then head British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), expressly told British policy makers that the Americans were fixing the intelligence around its decision to attack Iraq.

3. Tenet, in his recent book, makes the point that he was accepting the medal for his pre-Iraq performance. Perhaps that is why he accepted it but that clearly is not why it was being presented.

4. Dorgin recounts a meeting where two of our dedicated CIA officers get into a passionate argument, believing their facts and input mattered. In frustration one told the other “you can kiss my ass in Macy’s window”.

5. David Kay, the “special” weapons inspector, that candidly told Congress that he found no NBC (Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical) refusing to become another manipulated mannequin in the public’s Iraq war window.

He was invited to the White House but not to get a Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was served dinner and quizzed by our Executive to determine the extent of their damage control. Their public Iraq war window imploded and all their mannequins were full of glass shards, some no longer recognizable.

6. Congress has been entirely negligent, however politically astute, in its obligation to lodge Article of Impeachment against this Executive for its numerous abuses, including the disastrous, catastrophic, and destructive Iraq War debacle.

Curveball was a minor bit player, if that, in the disastrous, catastrophic, and destructive Iraq War debacle – most would say a distraction.