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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (79079)	3/3/2003 6:23:26 PM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 281500

Tom, I see now. Goldberg might have been had by Shahab but that doesn't make Goldberg a liar. You're saying that Goldberg presented Sahab as a credible witness but right at the start of that section of Goldberg's very long article he says: For two days, the intelligence agency permitted me to speak with any prisoner who agreed to be interviewed. I was wary; the Kurds have an obvious interest in lining up on the American side in the war against terror. But the officials did not, as far as I know, compel anyone to speak to me, and I did not get the sense that allegations made by prisoners were shaped by their captors. The stories, which I later checked with experts on the region, seemed at least worth the attention of America and other countries in the West. He's warning us that the part that follows is speculative. The part about Shahab is interesting. The first paragraph is bizarre. Shehab is captured holding a film which when developed shows pictures of him either murdering someone or mutilating a corpse. Why would he keep something like that instead of destroying it? The question leads in odd directions. If he kept it for himself, then he is an unusual person who likely should be locked away for life. He might have kept it because it was in a sense, bona fides, guaranteeing an interest in him by any number of people interested in law and order, including intelligence people. Or it might have been proof of a contracted murder; the man admitted to killing folk so that's not an unreasonable speculation. This much of his tale is probably true: "I met a group of drug traffickers," he said. "They gave us drugs and we got them weapons," which they took from Iran into Afghanistan. In 1996, he met an Arab Afghan. "His name was Othman," the man went on. "He gave me drugs, and I got him a hundred and fifty Kalashnikovs. Then he said to me, 'You should come visit Afghanistan.' So we went to Afghanistan in 1996. We stayed for a while, I came back, did a lot of smuggling jobs. My brother-in-law tried to send weapons to Afghanistan, but the Iranians ambushed us. I killed some of the Iranians." The Iranian news agency is constantly reporting the government's trials with smuggling on the Afghan border - The country has lost some thousands of policemen and soldiers in shootouts with smugglers. Drugs come out of Afghanistan and stuff like guns goes in.. That much is unexceptional. That he might make business connections with alQaeda types in Afghanistan is also not an unreasonable claim. Smuggling electronic goods into Iran from Iraq could also be a decent business. That he might take things into Iran for Iraq intelligence folk is not a stretch, either. They would check him out and interview him to see if he was reliable for the tasks they wanted him to do. Burke had the advantage of interviewing Shahab some months after Goldberg,. It seems clear Shahab's story had grown more elaborate since he spoke with Goldberg. There's stuff in the interview with Burke that's not in Goldberg's and information that contradicts what he told Goldberg. But it's probably not a good idea to think that, coming in cold Shahad was transparantly obviously an unreliable witness. - quite the contrary - as Burke says, he was fluent and coherent. One interview with any of these people the Kurds have in custody would not be sufficient to get at the truth of their statements, even if they thought they were telling the truth. The two articles together make up an interesting picture, I think. The two stories don't make a picture of Goldberg as a liar. He warns his readers that he's not sure, and that the Kurds have their own agenda - which is to get the CIA to come there - but there's enough to their stories that western intelligence agencies should take an interest. The Kurds apparently achieved their goal. The CIA has opened some offices there. ............................................ >>>Goldberg presented Shahab as a credible witness, when it was transparently obvious he was not.>>> newyorker.com observer.co.uk