We knew from the beginning that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and the rest of the Bush Crime Family threw the America people a “foul ball” as they tried to sell us on invading Iraq based on the ’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

What we didn’t know, until recently, is that the CIA was thrown a curveball as they hastily produced the 2002 NIE in 19 days; a process that typically takes 6 to 12 months!

It was always obvious to anyone who didn’t drink Bush’s “kool-aid” that our invasion of Iraq was based on lies, deception and manipulation of the facts.

It seems that the plot has now thickened as we know how much the Bush and his CIA relied on an Iraqi defector ironically code named “Curveball” whose pre-war claims led to the worst intelligence failure in American history!

Tom Clancy couldn’t have written a better plotline!

The story begins with Curveball seeking political asylum in Germany after fleeing Iraq in 1999. After discovering that he worked for an Iraqi government program as an engineer, they put him in a defector protection program, changed his name, and gave him a new identity.

Curveball reported that Saddam had built an armada of trucks that could deliver anthrax, botulinum toxin, and other deadly microbes and toxins with pinpoint accuracy.

The information he provided about bio-weapons languished until after 9/11, when the CIA, who has never interviewed him before, never verified the information he gave, suddenly accepted it as gospel.

In October of 2002 a NIE on Iraq concluded that Saddam had an active biological weapons program.

In January 2003, President Bush gave his infamous State of the Union Address and cited the intelligence from Curveball. Colin Powell that gave his infamous presentation before the U.N. Security Council, showing pictures of the supposed bio-trucks….trucks that never existed….a fabrication made up by a frightened refugee from Iraq.

Time and again CIA leaders ignored contrary evidence brushed aside complaints, and even punished skeptics and treated those that tried to bring truth to power like heretic

I have paraphrased several key parts of this article using a Harper’s magazine interview of Bob Drogin dated October 14, 2007. Drogin is the author of the book Curveball. Drogin has covered intelligence and national security in the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times since 1998.

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