60 Minutes will be profiling a bad source for the CIA.


Buried within is the fact German Intelligence even vouched for the guy in an official letter directed to Clinton + Bush CIA Director George Tenet - the scandal being Tenet doesn't remember seeing.


All kinds of other things about the guy are confirmed ala he was, in fact, a chemical engineer working at a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was believed to be involved in Iraqi production of mobile biological weapons - the scandal being that he just wasn't a very good chemical engineer.


The reports even conclude that his descriptions of everything were "mostly accurate".


In the murky world of intelligence, that's as close as can be had under some circumstances. Particularly after years of a Clinton administration during which time the CIA's resources were increasingly limited and we were forced to outsource much of our covert activities to reports from other nations ... like Germany. And France.


Bob Simon apparently takes great joy in concluding the Iraqi source (Rafid Ahmed Alwan AKA 'Curve Ball') "embellished his account by saying 12 workers had been killed by biological agents in an accident at the plant", presumably in his quest for asylum (which he received from Germany where he's now been outed).


The original debate on Iraq is still just as valid today as it was then - given a dictatorship and rogue regime run by an evil tyrant and sworn enemy who refuses to cooperate with the world community and repeatedly defies the UN, etc. - how much confirmation is required? The responsibility lay in the hands of Sadaam to come clean. The real question also remains, if in doubt, at what point does a surviving nation let gathering threats go too far ... as they did on 9/11.


MORE: 60 Minutes


FLOPPING ACES: The WMD Curveball - But the one thing about this report that is even more interesting to contemplate is the fact that because of this defector can we finally put to rest the Bush lied meme?