Dan - you appear to cling to the fallacy that it was the "fault of the intelligence community". And you appear unable to acquaint yourself with the frequent stories of ex-cia agents de jour when they say 'we told 'em, they ignore us'. Tenet threw himself and was thrown under the bus and got a medal of freedom for a spectacular cluster.

Dont forget that a Pentagon official said that Santorum's charade about the chem weapons casings were not the WMDs that we went to war for.

The key points of Powell's slide show at the UN - February 5, 2003

Biological weapons - mobile trailers
Chemical weapons -
Nuclear weapons - aluminum tubes
Delivery systems - arial drones
Terrorism - Zarqawi

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Biological Weapons

In November 2002, UN weapons inspectors investigated Curveball's claims, and found that details and information given by Curveball could not be verified.

Former CIA Director George Tenet and his former deputy, John McLaughlin, announced that they were not aware of doubts about Curveball's veracity before the war. However, Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA's European division, told the Los Angeles Times that "everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening" with Curveball.

"Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening," said Drumheller, who retired in November after 25 years at the CIA. He said he never met personally with Tenet, but "did talk to McLaughlin and everybody else." Drumheller scoffed at claims by Tenet and McLauglin that they were unaware of concerns about Curveball's credibility. He said he was disappointed that the two former CIA leaders would resort to a "bureaucratic defense" that they never got a formal memo expressing doubts about the defector. "They can say whatever they want," Drumheller said. "They know what the truth is …. I did not lie." Drumheller said the CIA had "lots of documentation" to show suspicions about Curveball were disseminated widely within the agency. He said they included warnings to McLaughlin's office and to the Weapons Intelligence Non Proliferation and Arms Control Center, known as WINPAC, the group responsible for many of the flawed prewar assessments on Iraq.

After learning the intelligence provided by Curveball was going to be used as the "backbone" of the case for war, the Pentagon analyst wrote a letter to the CIA expressing his concerns. The Deputy of the CIA Counter Proliferation Unit quickly responded by saying:

"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say. The Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about."[4][5]

The CIA claimed that it did not have "direct access" to Curveball, and that the mysterious informant instead communicated to Germany's intelligence service, which relayed the information to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency. He was described by German intelligence as an individual not living in Iraq and as an "out of control" and crazy alcoholic.

German officials said that they had warned American colleagues well before the Iraq war that Curveball's information was not credible - but the warning was ignored. German agents told Die Zeit newspaper that they had warned the Bush administration long before last year that there were "problems" with Curveball's account. "We gave a clear credibility assessment. On our side at least, there were no tricks before Colin Powell's presentation," one source told the newspaper.

Aluminum Tubes

On September 20, 2002, The United Press International reported that the there were:

... doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on September 8 that imported aluminum tubes 'are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs' a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence.

While the gas centrifuge application cannot be ruled out, we assess that the procurement activity more likely supports a different application, such as conventional ordnance production. For example, the tube specifications and quantity appear to be generally consistent with their use as launch tubes for man-held anti-armor rockets or as tactical rocket casings. Also, the manner in which the procurement is being handled (multiple procurement agents, quotes obtained from multiple suppliers in diverse locations, and price haggling) seems to better match our expectations for a conventional Iraqi military buy than a major purchase for a clandestine weapons-of-mass destruction program.

As was revealed in the review, the CIA's view was that "the tubes were probably intended for an Iraqi uranium enrichment centrifuge program" and that they "have little use other than for a uranium enrichment program."

Prior to the invasion, the CIA report to congress clearly said that the tubes may have uses other than for a centrifuge.

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 19, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36348-2002Sep18?language=printer

A key piece of evidence in the Bush administration's case against Iraq is being challenged in a report by independent experts who question whether thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq were intended for a secret nuclear weapons program.

Delivery Systems

In the case of the NIE's reporting on Iraq's development of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), however, the Committee found that the reporting generally was not well-supported by the underlying intelligence, and overstated what was known concerning the likelihood that the Iraqi UAVs were intended for use as a delivery means for biological weapons.

Yet the new panel conspicuously omitted the "Powers That Be" e-mail that appeared in the Senate report. In fact, commission leaders seemed to not even know of its existence. "What e-mail are you talking about?" Judge Lawrence Silberman, the chairman, testily responded when asked by a NEWSWEEK reporter why it wasn't included in the report. "I'm mystified." Two hours later, after NEWSWEEK supplied the panel with a copy of the e-mail from the Senate report, a commission spokesman explained that the panel was aware of it but chose not to include it because its contents were already known. But its absence from the report raises questions of whether the Silberman panel may have "cherry-picked" evidence to exclude anything politically embarrassing to the "Powers That Be." Not so, says the White House.

Terrorism - Zarqawi

Lots of reports saying that there is no proof, and there was no proof - pre war, that they Saddam and Z were working together.




>>The garbage in those slides have been disproven by the troops on the ground and by the 911 report.
>
>You asked for examples of pre-war intelligence pointing to the existance of WMD's. The presentation to the UN pretty much lays out what the administration believed.
>
>I won't argue that a lot of it has been disproven. Post-war.