Five years ago, the US government presented what it said was proof that Iraq harbored biological weapons. The information came from a source named Curveball developed by German intelligence -- and it turned out to be disastrously wrong. But to this day, Germany denies any responsibility.
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March 25, 2008
How Germans Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq
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Well, what the BND did was to forward information under the explicit warning that this information was single-sourced, unconfirmed and the reliability of the source uncertified. Given the mentalitiy of the Bush administration towards foreign contributions in the run-up to the Iraq war - best personified by Donald Rumsfeld - it would have been a futile effort to try and push skeptical analysis on them.
Besides, it was not the German government who (against all professional wisdom in the intelligence busines) made this single report a cornerstone of national policy. So why should the German intelligence service go through the hassle of confirming the information?
Another question none of the critics involved never touches is: How should they have done it? The American investigation of Curveball's reliability didn't even start until after the invasion was complete. What assets would the Germans have had to accomplish that beforehand? I don't know and, it would seem, DER SPIEGEL doesn't know, either.
The truth of the matter is: The Bush administration was willing to go into Iraq no matter how thin the straws they had to grasp at to sell it to the public. The only way of preventing the incriminating information supplied by Curveball from being used would have been to keep it from the Americans altogether. Any serious doubts voiced by the BND would have been discarded by the Perles and Wolfowitzes who collated the data for the war effort. They had solely political reasons to belive the reports and for that reason would have assumed any German doubts to be just as political.
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