It’s been two years since the onset of the Bush administration’s mis-adventure’s in Iraq. By now, everyone knows that the tales spun by an obediant media into a gullible public about weapons of mass destruction were, indeed, lies. The masquerade continues.

The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilitites of the United States Concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction (PDF) was released on March 31, 2005, and seeks to affirm an accounting of events that deftly avoids any material accountability.

Prewar claims by the United States that Iraq was producing biological weapons were based almost entirely on accounts from a defector who was described as “crazy” by his intelligence handlers and a “congenital liar” by his friends ….. Despite persistent doubts about his credibility, Curveball’s claims were included in the Bush administration’s case for war without so much as a caveat.

Anyone who thinks that Curveball was a lone actor in this passion play is criminally naive. He supplied CIA and DIA operatives with data that was described as having “remarkable specificity”. It was later discovered that he was not even in Iraq at the time he was purportedly gathering data. How, then, was he able to be so specific? The commission also points out that:

The reports triggered a flurry of escalating U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq, even though the DIA “did not even attempt to determine Curveball’s veracity,” according to the report.

So, in the run up to a pre-emptive invasion of another country, our intellegence professionals didn’t consider it necessary to verify whether or not the only source of information we were relying on was telling the truth. This leaves the American people (and the world) to decide whether our government is dangerously inept or maliciously dishonest.

In the end, all we have to go on is the report of a Presidential Commission that lays the blame on a single informant that no one in U. S. intelligence has ever met and was described as a crazy alcoholic by his German handlers. The media, of course, regurgitates the commission’s report in accordance with their role as PR agency for a rogue administration.