The clearly unhappy Tenet, with hand covering his eyes, not looking during the Powell/UN presentation, is an iconic image of that 2003 winter at the line of departure.

Powell's legalistic denials (if you look at precisely what I said...) as WMD fell apart like a cheap suitcase , indicate that he knew the core casus belli was rotten, long before he knew that he was the deniability that he thought he had wrung from Tenet's staff.

Pointing to plentiful smoking guns and bodies hasn't been enough, so far. If the good soldier truly wants a court of inquiry on our part in mass homicide, he should own up to 'what did I do wrong?'

As Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) tells the culpable French General in "Paths of Glory":
"Because you don't know the answer to that question, I pity you."

Tom, perhaps you are right that Tenet played Colin Powell for a fool. Indeed, the Bush Administration played the whole country for a fool. But Powell was (supposedly) an experienced grown-up and savvy in the ways and means of Washington. After all being an NSA advisor and understudy to Cheney would make one think that he might have become alert to the more Machiavellian tendencies of that city.

For me Powell is a bit of a mystery. His role in My Lai is a big question mark at least in my mind and this Boy Scout act during the Bush years can’t but make me wonder what the hell was going on in his head. He is the guy that everybody wants to like largely because of a very sincere and engaging personality. But I feel that he may lack moral courage to do what he knows to be the right thing.

The whole crew from Bush to Wolfowitz may have been skunks but that doesn’t in itself get Powell off the hook. Powell has yet to come clean on his role and lapses in this whole affair. He would be wise to do so in that it would refurbish his reputation. I still want to like the guy again but I am looking for a reason to do so.

I take this post as content-free to be honest. I think there's good reason to believe a lot of the US government knew "Curveball" wasn't credible. I thnik there's good reason to believe Tenet's a doofus. But I also think there's very good reason to believe Fischer isn't an honest broker in this matter and he'd have said that either way, so, so what?

One man's 'poor tradecraft' is another's specialty, down on Hwy 61.

Garden variety felons have been convicted (some executed) on fabricated and patently unbelievable evidence. 'Fixing facts around the policy' is a skill honed thru practice, from civil gumshoe to 'architect of victory'.

Curveball's current version is that an unbelievable story (one was aided in fabricating) was revived and shopped when the U$ price for trash intel skyrocketed.

Neither German BND nor CIA/DIA, Tenet nor Powell went sleepwalking naked. The time-stamp on 'doh!' denials come thru after the check cleared, and the certainty of major war meant Curveball was globally outed. Then it was time to start doctoring, er, documenting the history.

"Boy scout" is an excellent characterization of Colin Powell. He's known as Mr. Clean in other circles. Powell is just a very slick guy with an absolute need to always be portrayed as holier-than-thou in every way. See My Lai. Also take a look at his CJCS performance. He got away with his scam until he got into bed with some even seedier individuals, guys like Rumsfeld and Cheney, who undressed him with ease and who also aided in exposing him for what he is.

Lots of old intel hands knew or suspected Curveball was a fabricator. Actually, you didn't even need to be a spook. If you'd been reading the papers from the mid-90s on, you'd have been able to put the lie to Iraq having nukes with a very high degree of certainty. And, despite all of the "WMD" hysteria, nukes are what count. Bugs and gas are just neat stuff to drive up the fear quotient.

How could Powell not have known? Shit, spooks knew. Analysts and case officers warned Tenet and Powell, but each of these veteran ass-kissers decided to take the easy way. They ended up feeding Curveball's garbage to a president who was so anxious to invade Iraq he was having an orgasm, but, who, even while playing his role as Great Hero of 9/11, still needed an excuse. Tenet comes up with the garbage, packages it for Powell, and Powell then does his tap dance for the U.N. and the even more important American audience in prime time. "Slam dunk," according to Tenet, but not exactly in the way that skunk meant. More in the line of successfully pulling off the scam.

The government is full of ass-kissers and liars. Our benighted populace wets itself in fear of oh-boy, "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (TM) thanks to the ass-kissers and liars. Powell and Tenet make a fine pair.

Some of us hoped the 'certain march to war' being reported by MSM in 2002 was a convincing bluff; Saddam could be threatened and bribed into exile. Had we achieved such a deal, which the Spanish PM said was a near thing, George W. would be holding a Nobel, a valued senior statesman.

As the two comments above state, the (inspected and documented to be non-existent) Iraqi nukes were the rotten core of the casus beli. Curveball's pinpoint location details were also inspected/disproved before the war. But the whole WMD term is used to conflate/confuse lesser weapons with nukes. The older "NBC" term is specific, and in proper sequence of concern.

Minor point of fact: Blix and Elbaradei's UNMOVIC inspectors were withdrawn in Feb 03, in effect forced out by impending US invasion, not Saddam. The UNSCOM inspectors were thrown out by Saddam in 1998. But it was shown that anglo-US members of that team had covertly helped target for the robust 1997 bombing compaign, which was a violation of their charter.