LA Times on Curveball

is well summarized at Talking Points Memo. Curveball, an Iraqi defector to Germany and the source of the much touted intelligence on bioweapons in Iraq turns out to have been a mediocre engineer who was far from involved in Iraq's weapons programs. CIA investigations revealed that even his friends in Iraq called him a "con man" and "hustler." Pretending to have valuable information about the Iraqi weapons program, he gained political asylum in Germany, where he now resides. The best part of the story, or okay, best part to me, is that when investigators find his mother in Iraq and interview her, she shows the investigators the vestiges of her son's room, filled with posters of American rock stars.

Analysts in the CIA who dared to question Curveball's credibility were sidelined or pushed asiide, even when it was proven that he had been fired from his government post in 1995, and claims he made about developments in the development of bio-weapons were dated 1997. Curveball fingered a weapons plant that turned out to be a corn silo. The UN inspectors tested the corn.

Maybe Americans don't care that their government distorts intelligence in order to justify a war. I don't know.