ANOTHER CONDI LIE

Frank Rich's "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" provides an interesting framework to view not only the lead up to the Iraq War but also the attempts at post-hoc justification for it. Rich's background as a theater critic gives him insight into the "story line" the Bush regime wanted to sell us.

I have pointed out before that Condoleezza Rice is a liar and Rich reminds me of another example.

From Lexis-Nexis
CNBC News Transcripts
SHOW: Capital Report (9:00 PM ET) - CNBC
June 3, 2003 Tuesday
LENGTH: 2929 words
EADLINE: National security adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice discusses the supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, US-Europe relations and other current issues
ANCHORS: GLORIA BORGER; ALAN MURRAY

Dr. RICE: But let's remember what we've already found. Secretary Powell on February 5th talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that--dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described.But it will take some time, with interviews, with documents, to put the whole picture together. This was a program that was built for deceit and concealment. It will take some time to put the picture together.

MURRAY: OK. Let's be careful and precise here, because that's what this whole argument going on right now is about. Do we know that those trailers were used for developing biological weapons?

Dr. RICE: We know that these trailers look exactly like what was described to us by multiple sources as the capabilities for building or for making biological agents. We know that we have from multiple sources who told us that then and sources who have confirmed it now.

This was a lie. From the 11/20/2005 edition of the Los Angeles Times:

How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball'
The Iraqi informant's German handlers say they had told U.S. officials that his information was 'not proven,' and were shocked when President Bush and Colin L. Powell used it in key prewar speeches

by Bob Drogin and John Goetz
(excerpts)

Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."

The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball's account.

More problematic were the three sources the CIA said had corroborated Curveball's story. Two had ties to Chalabi. All three turned out to be frauds.

The most important, a former major in the Iraqi intelligence service, was deemed a liar by the CIA and DIA. In May 2002, a fabricator warning was posted in U.S. intelligence databases.

On Feb. 8 [2003], three days after Powell's speech, the U.N.'s Team Bravo conducted the first search of Curveball's former work site. The raid by the American-led biological weapons experts lasted 3 1/2 hours. It was long enough to prove Curveball had lied.

Rice "neglected" to mention another recent source:

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A01

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.