By Gustav Wynn (about the author)
If proven deliberate, the Iraq WMD intel debacle could constitute domestic and international war crimes. Someone must have had a long fight behind the scenes to get this controversy on the air because most of the facts have been readily available for years through indie media, books, articles (and even in drips and drabs on MSNBC).
Curveball (aka Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi) was the main reason given for the US invasion of Iraq. In truth, the Iraqi exile had no bio-weapons experience, but fed claims about mobile bio-weapons labs to the BND (German intelligence) because he knew the Bush administration was itching for war.
Officials within the BND, CIA and DIA all surmised Curveball was lying. These dissents were somehow “lost in the shuffle”, we are told. This is supposed to be the honest “mistake” that gave us the war. But there are plenty of whistleblowers saying otherwise and even naming names, if the media and Congress should begin to listen.
MSNBC has promoted this TV special with a graphic showing Iraq team principles Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and Rice dramatically walking down a Texas dirt path. But Colin Powell isn’t in the shot.
This means MSNBC may be editorially sympathetic to Powell’s point of view. They will include interviews with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s Chief of Staff. But Powell himself has continually rolled over for the “hoax” that ruined his career, refusing to call for the heads of the other Bushites.
Powell’s former sideman has been blowing the whistle since 2005, even offering totestify against Cheney, Tenet and deputy CIA director John McGlaughlin, claiming the Office of the Vice President breached protocol, making agents within the CIA do Cheney’s bidding, counter to the agency’s independent conclusions.
We’ll hear Secretary Powell did doubt Curveball and the White House. Wilkerson described these reservations on PBS in 2006, which put Powell in the position of either publicly going after Cheney and the Iraq Team who set him up, or keeping his mouth shut to protect them. Hiding his own skeletons, Powell did not speak out.
But then in 2011, another Wilkerson interview with Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald brought more disturbing revelations to light. Just as the US stood on the brink of war, Powell rejected the WMD intel, calling Scooter Libby’s 50-page report “bullshit” as he threw it into the trash.
Powell was told of a new link between Saddam and bin Laden, a high-level al Qaeda terrorist had admitted everything. This was the clincher for Powell, who would go out to make the fateful speeches to Congress and the UN that would sanction the war and destroy his career.
But one wonders if Maddow may have asked for more editorial freedom in a contract renegotiation – her previous contract reportedly expired just around November. If you watch her show every day, you might have noticed Ms. Maddow, right around this time, getting more forceful against Republicans and Democrats alike. Here she savages John McCain for “grasping for relevance” hyping Benghazi, and here she questions the legality of Obama’s drone program.
But it was two years ago this week on a pilot MSNBC show featuring Cenk Uygur which for the first time on cable TV, blew open the Curveball story, interviewing Col. Wilkerson who “absolutely” accused Dick Cheney of duplicity, setting up Powell with false information about Iraq’s WMD program.
This is when America should have begun the debate on accountability, but nothing happened. Instead, Cenk Uygur’s deal with MSNBC quickly fell apart, because MSNBC was concerned with Uygur’s propensity to go too aggressively after establishment figures. Instead of signing a million dollar contract and “toning it down”, Cenk walked away.
How Many Whistleblowers Will it Take?
We’ve been reporting here the long list of Bush administration insiders talking for years about crimes, lies and cover ups: Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Hugh Shelton, Cheney Mid East advisor David Wurmser, DOJ veteran J. Gerald Hebert, Retired Army Maj. General Antonio Taguba, General Barry McCaffrey, CIA Veteran Robert Baer, and White House Secretary Scott McClellan all spoke publicly about the lies and deceit in the lead up to the invasion.
Similarly, speaking to Al Jazeera, Colin Powell said he was simply passing along the intel that everyone else had vouched for, noting “it is a blot on my record”.
“Imagine how I felt the day they finally came in and said to me, well we don’t have four independent sources for that biological warfare van, it’s one guy, and he’s loopy, and he’s in a German jail, and we’ve never talked to him. Hello?”.
Source: http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Maddow-MSNBC-Special-on-I-by-Gustav-Wynn-130216-72.html