{"id":1751,"date":"2006-04-01T12:17:20","date_gmt":"2006-04-01T19:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/old-news-rediscovered\/"},"modified":"2006-04-01T12:17:20","modified_gmt":"2006-04-01T19:17:20","slug":"old-news-rediscovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/old-news-rediscovered\/","title":{"rendered":"Old News Rediscovered"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"mine\"><p>I ran across these two linked articles by chance and did a double-take when I saw the dates were nearly a year ago. I remember Curveball, but don&#8217;t remember the American press calling him a crazy drunkerd, as the Brits did. I don&#8217;t recall the Blackwater controversy at all. <span class=\"sig\">mjh<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/observer.guardian.co.uk\/international\/story\/0,6903,1451138,00.html\">The Observer | International | US relied on &#8216;drunken liar&#8217; to justify war<\/a> Edward Helmore in New York<br \/>\nSunday April 3, 2005<br \/>\nThe Observer<\/p>\n<p>An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq&#8217;s alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as &#8216;crazy&#8217; by his intelligence handlers and a &#8216;congenital liar&#8217; by his friends.<\/p>\n<p>The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball&#8217;s credibility, his claims were included in the administration&#8217;s case for war without caveat.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/headlines05\/0403-02.htm\">Fury at US Security Firm&#8217;s &#8216;Shoot for Fun&#8217; Memo<\/a> by Mark Townsend<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest private security firms in Iraq has created outrage after a memo to staff claimed it is &#8216;fun&#8217; to shoot people.<\/p>\n<p>Emails seen by The Observer reveal that employees of Blackwater Security were recently sent a message stating that &#8216;actually it is &#8220;fun&#8221; to shoot some people.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Dated 7 March [2005] and bearing the name of Blackwater&#8217;s president, Gary Jackson, the electronic newsletter adds that terrorists &#8216;need to get creamed, and it&#8217;s fun, meaning satisfying, to do the shooting of such folk.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I ran across these two linked articles by chance and did a double-take when I saw the dates were nearly a year ago. I remember Curveball, but don&#8217;t remember the American press calling him a crazy drunkerd, as the Brits did. I don&#8217;t recall the Blackwater controversy at all. mjh The Observer | International | &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/old-news-rediscovered\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Old News Rediscovered<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}