Talk:Curveball (informant)

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[edit] internal consistency" paragraph should be...

The point of the "internal consistency" paragraph is that anyone with a modicum of engineering training in the CIA who saw what Curveball was claiming should have been able to perceive that his claims didn't ring true. Curveball claimed to be an engineer yet what he said was (it appears) all layman-level and unperceptive of engineering concerns and attitudes.

This is disturbing. With its multi-billion dollar budget and its essential function you'd want to be confident that the CIA was not vulnerable to utter crap from any source. One of the ways to avoid falling for utter crap would be to submit raw intelligence to analysis by experts. Submit engineering-related raw intelligence to analysis by engineers, submit science-related raw intelligence to analysis by scientists. If that is not routinely done we might as well convert the CIA building to an ordinary office building: the CIA is useless

(Of course I'd also like to see the same thing done by newspapers and media. I have never seen anything written on the trailers in Iraq that indicates the reporter checked any aspect of the material with a qualified engineer or scientist. )

This is significant. I'm a chemist, I've made hydrogen (on a backyard-experiment scale) using the same reaction as was used on those trailers. Anyone who has done the experiment knows that in addition to hydrogen the reaction produces a lot of heat. On the trailers that would be a great deal of heat. From personal experience I recognize that the cooling unit that was explained so ridiculously in the CIA/DIA white paper is an essential component of the hydrogen-generation system on the trailers. The cooling unit isn't proof of biological use, it's far more proof of hydrogen generation.

It's also absurd science to claim that the cooling unit is even marginally appropriate for biological WMD culture. Anyone who has done biological culture (this includes millions of home bakers and home brewers) knows that temperature is one of the most critical parameters in a biological culture process. You'd not want a simple "cooling unit," you'd want a full temperature-control system. (Note that the unit in the drawings shown by Powell at the UN had no temperature control system. Those drawings were concocted by persons not well versed in biological culture. David Kay was associated with that project.)

I'd still prefer to believe that the points I raise here were recognized quite early by the analysts at the CIA and that those analysts had their opinions suppressed: the CIA was used as a political tool despite its own expertise. John Prados reports (in "Hoodwinked") that at a meeting of analysts on the nature of the trailers only one analysts supported the biological EMD culture fable. That's despicable, but at least in that interpretation the CIA isn't completely filled with blundering, politically-motivated fools.

My point is that it isn't necessary to know (from some source) that Curveball was regarded as unreliable. The information he supplied in itself indicates he was unreliable.

Note, too, that Tenet never said that the CIA believed the trailers were for biological WMD culture. All he said was that "analysts" (plural) at the CIA believed the trailers were for biological WMD culture.

Minasbeede 16:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Minasbeede, you sound like you know what you're talking about, but that's not really the issue. WP:VERIFIABILITY requires that information in our articles be not only 'true', but 'provably' true. Without citations from reputable sources that can't be done in this case. If you can find a newspaper or magazine article that recapitulates some or all of what you've said, it would be a very welcome addition to the article. Otherwise it's not really appropriate IMO.
Eleland 19:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, OK, that makes sense. What needs to be provable? What Tenet said, the fact that the reaction used to generate the hydrogen generates heat, what? I'm asking the straight-forward question: what do I say that need proof?
Part of my problem is that the press, media and left have bungled on this issue, probably because for most of them there is an utter lack of scientific or engineering understanding. If there were published articles on these points then the situation would be far different. As it stands the utter garbage fabrications (that's not an exaggeration) in the CIA/DIA white paper would not have the general acceptability that they have.
It's like if Curveball claimed he was an automotive engineer and was reporting on what was under the hood of a vehicle. If he said there was a big block of metal with round white things sticking out and wires or tubes going to the tops of the white things you should right away know that no, he is not the automotive engineer he claims to be. An automotive engineer would see an engine block and head of a particular type of metal and would recognize spark plugs and ignition wiring. That's the kind of dissonance that appears to be the essence of Curveball's reports (since we don't see the raw reports we do have to assume that information that showed he was familiar with the field in which he claimed to have been trained wasn't removed from what he said. before publication.) Even if that did happen that would be another invalidation of the white paper.
There was a Jay Bookman column in which he declared the CIA/DIA white paper to be a lie. will that do?
When I state that bakers and brewers know that temperature is a major parameter for a biological culture I am attempting to point out that what I am saying is common knowledge - and probably common knowledge that goes back millenia. Do I have to cite a source for that statement? (That may sound peevish and I guess it is, at heart, but the straight answer to the question should suffice.)
The essence of "internal consistency" is that Curveball claimed to be an engineer but didn't talk like an engineer. I'd be very glad for that to have been reported in the press but as it stands Wikipedia is de facto an original source. Is that improper? In the automotive engineer example above would I actually have to show a magazine article somewhere that made the same case if Curveball had claimed to be an automotive engineer and had made an uninformed report such as I suggested as an example?
Thank you for your time and your comment. I see you (aparently) inserted some helpful hints in the article itself. (If others read this I'd like their comments.) Perhaps a better word than "poseur" could be used but all the word means is somebody who claims to be what he isn't. If I found some reasonably short defintion of "engineer" that showed an engineer was, by the nature of his profession, concerned with "the function of components, material flow, energy flow, control of parameters, conditions," would that be satisfactory? I don't think I will ever find a definition of what a non-engineer is like. If Curveball were an engineer my belief is that what he said would reflect an engineer's interests and concerns. Instead he describes things more the way a politician or cab driver might, if the politician or cab driver had no actual understanding of the considerations involved. The CIA/DIA white paper might be convincing to a politician or cab driver with no further knowledge. To someone with a scientific or engineering background who bothers to study the white paper it should be obvious that it's utter nonsense.
I do stand naked here: as far as I know there's nothing published anywhere that makes many of the points that can and should have been made. I am unable to provide citations and we could share a pitcher or two bemoaning that fact. The white paper was a crude and naked fraud. It has not been exposed as such, although it is reported in "Hubris" that the State Department analysts were angered by the white paper. "Hubris" does not give detail about what it was that angered the State Department analysts. I suggest that they were angry because they also saw that the white paper was an utter fabrication. I'll agree that they may not have cared about Curveball: the flaws of the white paper are not by any stretch of the imagination all from that now known-to-be-unreliable source. But they were angry. I applaud their anger.
Thanks for your comment. What have I accomplished here?
Minasbeede 02:31, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I removed the paragraph in question. I'd like to continue the discussion, though.
Minasbeede 13:58, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discovered trailers

Well of course a team of scientists was sent to Iraq to examine the trailers and that team did report back to Washington that the trailers were not for biological WMD culture and that report did reach Washington before the white paper was released. That contrary report was instantly marked "SECRET" and is still classified. It is believed that the annex to the Duelfer report (final report on the US search for WMDS in Iraq) substantially echoes that still-classified report. The annex, which has a professional sheen to it. does conclude that hydrogen generation was the most likely use of the trailers. If you read the relevant chapter in "Hoodwinked," by John Prados, you will discover that at a meeting of intelligence analysts about the trailers only one analyst believed that the trailers were for biological WMD culture. So when Tenet said "analysts" in his building believed the trailers were for biological WMD culture (in the sophisticated Washington environment you have to give significant notice to the fact that Tenet did not say he believed it nor did he say the CIA believed it) either Tenet was promoting that one analyst into two or more analysts or one or more analysts with that belief didn't make it to the meeting Prados describes. Minasbeede 21:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Not sure what you referencing but Tenet called Powell in late summer 2003, seven months after the U.N. speech, he admitted that all of the CIA's claims Powell used in his speech about Iraqi weapons were wrong. "They had hung on for a long time, but finally Tenet called Powell to say, 'We don't have that one, either,' " Wilkerson recalled. "The mobile labs were the last thing to go."Joby Warrick (Sunday, June 25, 2006). Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says (HTML). Washington Post. Retrieved on 2007-07-23. -- AperfectHell 05:10, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure it was an earlier Joby Warrick article that told about the suppressed report from Iraq. (Yes, here it is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101888_pf.html)
I understand that, chronologically, the mobile labs were the last thing to go. My point is that the mobile lab story was never credible. It shouldn't have been the first thing to go (instead of the last), it was so bogus that it should never have been, period. The white paper made the story less credible - if you read the white paper knowing about the reaction used to make hydrogen and knowing even a little about biological culture. The materials used to make hydrogen were found on the trailers (And reported in the white paper.) The white paper disguised one of the materials (sodium hydroxide, common lye) by calling it "caustic." No trace of anything remotely related to biological culture was ever reported as being found on the trailers. The photo of the trailers reveals a system for a chemical process, not a system for a biological culture. The white paper is riddled with flaws that defeat its purpose of providing support for the mobile culture lab fable. The technical mission to Iraq and the Duelfer report reached the conclusion that the trailers were not for biological WMD culture. Substantially all the evidence available to the writers of the suppressed report and the Duelfer report was available to the writers of the white paper. The writers of the white paper didn't provide a logical or a technical analysis, they provided spin crafted to support the mobile culture lab fable. Minasbeede 14:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name of article

The reason I changed the name of the article back to its original name is very simply because that is what he is universally known as; very few people would have a clue as to who Rafid Ahmed Alwan might be. ("Curveball AND Iraq" gets 366,000 G-hits, while "Rafid Ahmed Alwan" gets only 4400 G-hits.) This is in clear conformity with Wikipedia:MOSBIO#Names, which states: "While the article title should generally be the name by which the subject is most commonly known, the subject's full name should be given in the lead paragraph...." Cgingold (talk) 00:49, 5 January 2008 (UTC)