Progress Pond

In the beginning was the lie …

So the world will be fooled again in 2018 – just unbelievable. The same bastards in Washington DC from politicians in US Congress to the Pentagon, Intelligense Agencies and the likes of John Bolton and neoconservaties.

A proven criminal track record living their murderous lives with impunity.

The Iraq War: In the beginning was the lie | Deutsche Welle – April 2018 |

    On April 9, 2003, US soldiers toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Fifteen years later we know that this war cost hundreds of thousands of lives, plunged the Middle East into chaos — and was based on lies.

The statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, and on millions of TV screens around the world, less than three weeks after the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Those pictures from April 9, 2003, are etched on our collective memory. Yet even 15 years later, many questions remain unanswered. We still don’t know, for example, exactly how many Iraqis died as a result of the war and in the chaos that followed.

More below the fold …

What we do know for sure is that the rationale for going to war was based on lies. There is a second picture associated with the Iraq War that is also ingrained in our collective memory: US Secretary of State Colin Powell giving his speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. Six weeks before the war began, Powell spent 76 minutes influencing international public opinion in favor of war. The core of his speech was that Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, that his regime was supporting international terrorism, and that it aimed to build nuclear weapons.

Codename ‘Curveball’

In 1999 the Iraqi chemist Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi came to Germany as a refugee. Alerted to his presence, Germany’s foreign intelligence service (the BND) interrogated him. They were hoping for information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Al-Janabi — referred to by his codename, “Curveball” — realized that the more information he provided, the more his status improved. He was given a German passport, money and his own apartment.

This continued until the BND tracked down al-Janabi’s former boss, who picked apart his web of lies. The German intelligence services then informed their American partners of this development. Nonetheless, there was renewed interest in “Curveball” after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Citing former BND head August Hanning, the daily newspaper Die Welt reported in August 2011 that the Americans had demanded a binding commitment from the Germans in 2001 assuring that Curveball’s statements were correct. Hanning refused to provide it, writing instead to the head of the CIA, George Tenet, “attempts to verify the information have been unsuccessful” and that it “must therefore be considered unconfirmed.”

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