White House used unreliable defector

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/8690091.htm?1c

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration helped rally public and congressional support for a preemptive invasion of Iraq by publicizing the claims of an Iraqi defector months after he showed deception in a lie detector test and had been rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri, claimed he'd worked at illegal chemical, biological and nuclear facilities around Baghdad. But when members of the Iraq Survey Group, the CIA-run effort to trace Saddam Hussein's illegal weapons, took Saeed back to Iraq earlier this year, he pointed out facilities known to be associated with the conventional Iraqi military. He couldn't identify a single site associated with illegal weapons, U.S. officials told Knight Ridder.

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The administration also publicized claims about Iraqi mobile biological weapons labs from a defector whom the Defense Intelligence Agency had labeled a fabricator and charges that Saddam had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa even though the CIA had said it couldn't verify the charge.

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The White House paper gave prominent billing to Saeed's claims. It was released Sept. 12, 2002, in conjunction with a speech Bush delivered at the United Nations General Assembly.

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A footnote in one version attributes Saeed's claims to a Dec. 20, 2001, front-page article in The New York Times that was based on an interview with the defector in Bangkok, Thailand.

...more...

Here's the White House link:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912.html

and here is State Dept's link:

http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/13456.htm

This article in the Kansas City Star is a pretty fair indictment of the lies that were being passed off. Glad to see it in the Midwest - maybe it's later than it should be, but better late than never.

Bill Clinton lied about having sex with a consenting adult.

Un-frikkin'-believable.

You guys, come on. What is more important to this administration?

1) Covering statues' nakid breasts, attacking medical marijuana, linking pot use to terrorists, going after Bill Clinton's sex life,

or,

2) getting reliable, confirmed data to be used as a basis to attack a former ally we funded, armed, provided with weapons, and WMDs?

We KNOW this cabal's preferences. And honest information doesn't rate.

,...they still publicized his unfounded claims. More evidence of intentional fabrication.

This makes him a close favorite of the Bush family. Birds of a feather...

It seems for a man who doesn't listen to focus groups, Bu$h much rather listen to liars as long as they tell him what he wants to hear.

...if he's saying what you want to hear, doesn't that kind of make up for it?

is unbelievable.

could any of these boobs possibly make it in the business world? they'd be laughed out and let go in a heartbeat. the only reason cheney and rumsfeld were ever ceos is because of the connections they made working in govt. and we all know what shrub's business record is -- he turned everything he ever touched into shit until he started using his family's name like a $5 bus station whore.

in times like these, we need the best and the brightest running our country. not knuckleheads and nincompoops who couldn't tell shit from apple butter.