Curley's Mistranslation - Part Deux!

One year ago (to the day, in fact), I responded to Pat Curley's mistranslation of the Sibel/Sarshar testimony. Pat's problem with Sibel Edmonds is that she supposedly misrepresented the contents of a 2004 Chicago Tribune article. As I wrote last year:

Pat's February 2009 analysis of the article she cited:

1. Attack in the US targeting 4-5 cities. Status: False. In fact the article quite clearly states that the impression of the official was that the attacks would be overseas.

2. Attack will involve airplanes. Status: True.

3. Some of the attackers already in the US. Status: False. No discussion of this in the article, and indeed, given that the belief was that the attack was more likely to take place overseas there is no reason to believe this claim.

4. Attack coming soon. Status: False. "...no mention of when or where the attacks might take place."

Pat makes it seem like Sibel was using that article as proof of her claim. But she was simply stating that the press had reported on the incident and that they confirmed the information was received in April 2001.

The fact is the US was a POTENTIAL target at the very least so his analysis of point 1 is bunk. He admits point 2 is true. There's no discussion about point 3 in the article so it is neither confirmed or disproven. And, with regards to point 4, "...no mention of when or where the attacks might take place" could be referring to a specific date. They could still have known that an attack would happen in the near future without knowing exactly when it was going to happen. So, even if we assume the article wasn't a deliberate damage control whitewash, it still disproves nothing. At worst Sibel may have been slightly exaggerating in her letter, but not lying like Pat claims.

Sibel has now posted Sarshar's testimony. The testimony debunks Pat's four points, and confirms my assessment of point 4:

They asked the guy to stop, asked him to repeat that again, and ordered me to take verbatim notes as I translated. They too took notes.

The informant continued:

‘According to my guys, Bin Laden’s group is planning a massive terrorist attack in the United States [1]. The order has been issued. They are targeting major cities, big metropolitan cities; they think four or five cities [1]; New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco; possibly Los Angeles or Las Vegas. They will use airplanes to carry out the attacks [2]. They said that some of the individuals involved in carrying this out are already in the United States [3]. They are here in the U.S.; living among us, and I believe some in US government already know about all of this (I assumed he meant the CIA or the White House).’

Tony, one of the agents asked ‘did they say when? Did they give any specific dates? Did they say how they were going to use airplanes; bombs or high jacking?’

The informant paused for a second:

‘No specific dates; not any that they were aware of. However, they said the general timeframe was characterized as ‘very soon.’ They think within the next two or three months.’ [4] He then added: ‘As far as how they are going to use the planes to attack; your guess is as good as mine. My bet, it will be bombs; planting bombs inside these planes, maybe the cargo, then have them blown up over the populated cities.’

Pat's response is to simply refer back to the Chicago Tribune article. His argument seems to be that because the 2004 article did not mention the five cities or tall buildings, the testimony is invalid. I personally will take raw testimony over a media report any day, but then again it's not my world view that's being challenged.

Pat is confident that if we were to ever see the unredacted testimony, it will bear no resemblance to what Sibel posted. Well, how about supporting the truth movement in a quest for a new investigation so we can maybe see it unredacted then? No? Didn't think so.