Drumheller was particularly forceful in denouncing the Iraqi defector codenamed “Curveball,” whose ludicrous claims about mobile Iraqi germ laboratories were trumpeted before the UN by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.  “Curveball’s” claims were outright lies and Powell, whose career was ruined by parroting these absurd allegations, should have known better.

“Curveball” was an ‘agent provocateur’ clearly sent by a neighbor of  Iraq to help promote a US attack on that nation.  Whether it was Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Israel that sent Curveball,” we still don’t know. All three fabricated “evidence” against Iraq and passed it to Washington.  That is where US intelligence was indeed misled.  But that’s only a minor part of the story.

A Washington cabal of pro-Israel neocons, oil men, and old-fashioned imperialists joined to promote a grossly illegal invasion of oil-rich Iraq.  One of its senior members, former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, admitted that weapons of mass destruction was chosen as the most convenient and emotive pretext for war.  Orders went out to CIA and NSA to find information linking Iraq to 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction.

Some of the worst torture inflicted on suspects kidnapped by CIA’s action teams was designed to make them admit to a link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.  There was, of course, none. But administration officials, like the odious Condoleeza Rice, kept broadly hinting at a nuclear threat to America. 

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, polls showed a majority of Americans believed Iraq was threatening the US with nuclear attack and was behind 9/11.  Amazingly, a poll taken of self-professed evangelical Christians just before the US attacked Iraq showed that over 80% supported war against Iraq.  So much for turning the other cheek.

Most of the US media, notably the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, amplified the lies of the Bush administration. TV networks were ordered never to show American military casualties or civilian dead.  Those, like this writer, who questioned the rational for war, or who wouldn’t go along with the party line, were blanked out from print and TV.

For example, I was immediately dropped from a major TV network after daring mention that Israel supported the 2003 Iraq war and would benefit from it.  I was blacklisted by another major US TV network at the direct demand of the Bush White House for repeatedly insisting that Iraq had no nuclear capability.

Very few analysts, journalists, or politicians took time to ask:  even if Iraq had nuclear weapons, how could they be delivered to North America?  Iraq had no long-range bombers and no missiles with range greater than 100kms.  Perhaps by FedEx?  No one asked, why would Iraq invite national suicide by trying to hit the US with a nuclear weapon?

The most original answer came from George W. Bush:  nefarious Iraqi freighters were lurking in the North Atlantic carrying “drones of death” that would attack sleeping America.   This hallucination was based on a single report  that the bumbling Iraqis were working a  children’s model airplane that, in the end, broke and never flew.  What inspired such a phantasmagoria?  Pot, too much bourbon, LSD, or thundering orders from Dick Cheney to find a damned good excuse for invading Iraq.

For Cheney and his oil pals, conquering Iraq would secure the Arab world’s biggest oil reserves for Uncle Sam and offer a central military base in the region.  For Washington’s bloodthirsty neocons, pulverizing Iraq would remove one of Israel’s most determined enemies, crush the only Arab nation that might challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly, and cost Israel nothing.   Invading Iraq produced the slow disintegration of the Mideast so long sought by militant Zionists.

It all worked brilliantly, at least from Israel’s viewpoint.  Not, however for the US.  Bush’s invasion shattered Iraq, led to al-Qaida and ISIS,  and left Washington saddled with a $1 trillion-dollar bill instead of the $60 million cost estimated by Wolfowitz.   The Mideast is in a tailspin, Palestinians are totally isolated, and Egypt, the region’s key nation, run by an Arab-fascist military dictatorship.

Tyler Drumheller was the only senior CIA officer to stand up and tell Americans they were lied into an unnecessary, illegal war.  Today, we have Iraqi déjà vu  anew as the lie factories and fear mongers work overtime to promote war with Iran.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation – Pakistan, Hurriyet, – Turkey, Sun Times Malaysia and other news sites in Asia.