Posted on 08/28/2011 11:48:30 AM PDT by Olog-hai
August Hanning, the now retired Bundesnachrichtendienst boss, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the administration of former US President George W. Bush presented unconfirmed reports by a BND source about Iraqi bio-weapons labs as a fact to the UN Security Council.
“The US misused the BND to start the Iraq War,” Hanning told the paper, adding that Germany was not at blame for the deception. "The Americans need to take responsibility for the war themselves."
The former spook also said the Bush administration was already planning the Iraq invasion in September 2001 shortly after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC. Just two weeks after the World Trade Center was destroyed, the BND received a request the US Central Intelligence Agency asking for any German information about Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
"For me, the request was a first sign of an American military strike in Iraq," Hanning said.
The Americans were particularly interested in an Iraqi informant with the tragically ironic code name "Curveball." He was a former Iraqi chemical engineer who had come to Germany in 1999 as an asylum seeker and who gave the BND information. Among other things, he claimed that Iraq possessed rolling biological weapons laboratories.
He later admitted to having lied about that.
Several former senior BND officials told the newspaper that the agency had repeatedly warned the CIA not to take Curveball’s information as fact. Hanning, the BND president at the time, even formulated his concerns about that in a letter to then CIA Director George Tenet. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the BND and I spent 7 years in Germany over my military career. I guess I wasn’t as important over there as I thought I was. LOL!
It will take at least another 20 years to sort this all out. Heck, they still argue about the JFK assassination.
Isn’t it funny...? when discussing WMDs in the context of the Bush presidency, suddenly “wmd” is ONLY referring to nukes? When did such a fine definition become the truth “du jour”?
If Obama chose to move against a tyrant who killed 600k of his countrymen with chemicals (don’t laff- it’s just an example!), would “wmd” THEN, again, describe chemicals and biologicals?
...just askin’...
The BND or Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Information Service) is Germany’s equivalent to the CIA. “Curve Ball” was their source.
Yea, especially when 500 tons of yellow cake had nothing to do with nukes. But Joe Wilson decided to define the arguement for the MSM so yellow cake doesn’t mean a fargin thing./sarc
“(CBS) That June 2000 speech was about weapons of mass destruction. In talking casually about that speech, Saddam began to tell the story of his weapons. It was a breakthrough that had taken five months.
“Oh, you couldn’t imagine the excitement that I was feeling at that point,” Piro remembers.
“And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?” Pelley asks.
“He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the ‘90s. And those that hadn’t been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq,” Piro says.
“So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?” Pelley asks.
“It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq,” Piro says.
Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.
“He believed that he couldn’t survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?” Pelley asks.
“Absolutely,” Piro says.
“As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn’t he stop it then? And say, ‘Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.’ I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?” Pelley asks.
“He didn’t. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially,” Piro says.
Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could he survive that. “He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage,” he says.
“Saddam didn’t believe that the United States would invade,” Pelley remarks.” whole story of Saddam interrogator; http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes/main3749494_page4.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
Frankly, I do not recall the USA blaming anyone for anything. The BND and whoever this is are thinking themselves a bit more important than they really are IMHO.
The USA depended on intelligence from a variety of sources to make the case over quite a long time...long enough in fact to hide a lot of the evidence by the time we acted.
Also, there were chemical WMD found as well as WMD program materials such as yellow cake, despite what the press and and even Bush himself admitted (why he didn't defend himself better I have no idea). The entire action was justified on the simple basis of obstruction of inspectors that were there as a condition of the cease fire. The WMD argument was simply additional reason.
“”The Americans need to take responsibility for the war themselves.”
Yeah, and let’s bring our troops home from Germany while we’re at it.
I understand the sentiment, however, I am not sure that the world is yet ready for Germany to establish a full and independent military capability on par with its dominent economic position.
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