Powell knew too: The man who was the principal source for President Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was so emotionally and mentally disturbed that he was considered unreliable.
When they cited the faulty intelligence, were they merely being incompetent or was it treason?
Now the Los Angeles Times reports that U.S. government officials, including the president, knew that the source, code named “Curveball,” was unbalanced and yet repeatedly cited his unreliable intelligence in the run-up to war.
Curveball was captured by the Germans and is under their control. A German official who supervised the suspect’s interrogation described his mental state this way:
“He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy… He is not a completely normal person.”
Furthermore, “the White House … ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball’s account. Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq’s biological weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed in two years.”
The president knowingly cited Curveball’s phony intelligence in his January 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had “mobile biological weapons labs” designed to produce “germ warfare agents.” Bush cited the mobile germ factories in at least four prewar speeches and statements, and other world leaders repeated the charge.
In a presentation before the U.N. a month later, Sec. of State Colin Powell also referred to Curveball’s intelligence as providing an “eyewitness account” that Iraq had sufficient germ stockpiles to kill “thousands and thousands” of people.
How is it possible that the president and the secretary of state did not know that Curveball was a flake and that information sourced to him was inoperative? Or did they know and choose to use it anyway because it supported their campaign to market the war?
These question brings us once again to the Bush conundrum: When the president and the secretary of state cited the faulty intelligence, were they merely being incompetent or was it treason?
Bush had originally denied ordering domestic wiretaps; but, when he at last admitted ordering the wiretaps, he denied that they required the court order. Was he lying then —or is he lying now?
When she was questioned about the wiretaps, Condoleezza Rice claimed that Bush never ordered anyone to do anything illegal. But proving the lie to the spin, it has since been learned that Bush was denied wiretaps but deliberately bypassed the court. Clearly —he has arrogated unto himself the power that should be reserved to the judiciary; he has undermined the Constitution and the very rule of law.
Treason?
And, in what one hopes is his final absurdity, Bush claims that he was only spying on people with “a history of blowing up trains, weddings and churches”. In fact, the wiretapping was on a scale scarcely imaginable.
He’s not merely subverted the rule of law, he’s lied about his role in doing it. If that’s not treason, what is?