New development from Powell on prewar intel

[ruminator]

Colin Powell now believes he has learned that the sources for the prewar information claims may not have been credible, provided inaccurate info and misled us.

Why,........all he had to do was lurk around here a bit to find out the truth.

<exerpt>
Powell's questioning of the defectors' claims puts added pressure on a bipartisan commission named by President Bush in February to examine the quality and use of prewar intelligence that Hussein had secret stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was developing nuclear weapons in violation of a U.N. ban.

'It appears not to be the case, that [the defectors' information] was that solid,'' Powell said aboard his aircraft. ``The commission that is going to be starting its work soon, I hope will look into these matters to see whether or not the intelligence agency had a basis for the confidence that they placed in the intelligence at that time.''

U.S.-led occupation troops and arms inspectors who have been scouring the country have to date found no biological weapons stockpiles or evidence that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program. Two truck trailers matching the description of the alleged biowarfare vehicles were turned over to U.S. troops, but their purpose remains in dispute.

Powell charged in a Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N. Security Council that Iraq had mobile biological warfare production and research facilities. At the time, he was seeking a U.N. resolution backing a U.S.-led invasion.

''If the sources fell apart, then we need to find out how we've gotten ourselves in that position,'' he told reporters Friday. ``I've had discussions with the CIA about it.''

Senior U.S. officials said it was not the CIA but the Defense Intelligence Agency, the top U.S. military intelligence organization, which was responsible for analyzing and corroborating the defectors' information.

The DIA received the defectors' claims through its Information Collection Program, a multimillion-dollar effort to gather intelligence inside Iraq run by the Iraqi National Congress and funded by U.S. taxpayers.

Most of the material supplied by the INC-provided defectors has been determined by U.S. intelligence officials to have been marginal at best and some of it exaggerated or bogus.

One of the defectors was code-named Curveball, senior U.S. officials said, and Curveball was the brother of a top lieutenant to Ahmed Chalabi, the group's leader and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/8350504.htm

....although, he did have some doubts back in Feb 2003,.....

<exerpt>
The scenario of an uneasy Powell received a major boost in the accounts of the three newsweeklies. US News reported, for example, that during a rehearsal of Powell's presentation at Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters on February 1, the normally mild-mannered retired general at one point "tossed several pages in the air. 'I'm not reading this', he declared. 'This is bullshit'."



The same magazine also reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) formally concluded that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons" in September 2002, just as Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld was telling Congress that the Baghdad "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas".

http://blogs.salon.com/0002551/2003/06/03.html

Another alledged conspiracy theory back in the day..........



This also brings to mind another question. As the claims of false prewar info coming from Chalabi and other exiles, who also are currently in control of the INC and ready to take it all on 30 June, is it wise to leave them in control?

They based part of their case to go to war on an informant named curveball.