Bush and Cheney Knew There Were No WMDs. They Lied.

Technorati Tags: Curveball, German government, Dick Cheney, Pres. Bush, Iraq war, weapons of mass destruction, mobile biological weapons laboratories,

Dick Cheney, at AIPAC [emphasis mine]:

... The terrorists value death the same way you and I value life. Civilized, decent societies will never fully understand the kind of mindset that drives men to strap on bombs or fly airplanes into buildings, all for the purpose of killing unsuspecting men, women and children who they have never met and who have done them no wrong. But that is the very kind of blind, prideful hatred we're up against.

ABC's The Blotter, on Curveball, the Iraqi defector whose lies about WMDs were used by the Bush administration to sell the Iraq war [emphasis mine]:

Curveball's false tales became the centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech before the United Nations in February 2003, even though he was considered an "unstable, immature and unreliable" source by some senior officials at the CIA.

Powell told ABC News he is "angry and disappointed" that he was never told the CIA had doubts about the reliability of the source.

"I spent four days at CIA headquarters, and they told me they had this nailed," Powell said.

Behind the scenes at the CIA, however, a former senior official says he was trying to keep the Curveball information out of the Powell speech.

"People died because of this," said Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of European operations at the CIA, who has written about it in a new book, "On the Brink." "All off this one little guy who all he wanted to do was stay in Germany."

Drumheller says he personally redacted all references to Curveball material in an advance draft of the Powell speech.

"We said, 'This is from Curveball. Don't use this,'" Drumheller says. Powell says neither he nor his chief of staff Col. Larry Wilkerson was ever told of any doubts about Curveball.

"In fact, it was the exact opposite," Wilkerson told ABC News. "Never from anyone did we even hear the word 'Curveball,' let alone any expression of doubt in what Secretary Powell was presenting with regard to the biological labs," Wilkerson said.

Andrew Sullivan, bringing it home:

The source for many of Colin Powell's false statements at the U.N. with respect to Saddam's biological WMDs can be traced to one very dubious Iraqi source, known as "Curveball." [...] The guy is still being protected by German intelligence. Powell was never told that the CIA regarded Curveball as "unstable, immature and unreliable". Some tried to warn about the danger. But Cheney and Rumsfeld had their way. Powell is now furious. Money quote:

Powell told ABC News he is "angry and disappointed" that he was never told the CIA had doubts about the reliability of the source. "I spent four days at CIA headquarters, and they told me they had this nailed," Powell said.

They did have it nailed. In the sense of: rigged. And Cheney must have taken particular pleasure in setting up his arch-rival, Powell, this way.

Yes, Cheney did know. Yes, Bush did know. They did not care. It wasn't Mary's life, or Liz's life, or Lynne's life. It wasn't Laura's life, or the Jenna-Barbie twins' lives. It wasn't even Barney's life.

It was, you see, the lives of young American men and women that Dick and George had never met and never would meet. It was, in fact, the lives of millions of "unsuspecting men, women and children who they have never met and who have done them no wrong."