'Curveball' Defector Admits To Lying About Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction

The Guardian:

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

Read the whole story: The Guardian

Comments

[spytheweb]

06:22 PM on 02/16/2011

Bush and Cheney are glad too. They wanted to attack Iraq and this guy helped. Germany and France and other big players knew this was a bogus war and didn't join in the reindeer games.

Now look at Iran and what lies are being told about them? Why has the US had it in for Iran for so many years? The same goes for Cuba. Why does the US have hard feelings for Cuba?

[natturnerx]

05:58 PM on 02/16/2011

if he admits to lying in any sworn statement or affidavit then its a clear-cut case of perjury. but then again, water-boarding is a clear-cut case of torture, so the precedents have already established the iraq war as an accountability-free zone.

[Longtimeliberal]

07:02 AM on 02/17/2011

Funny a lot of info coming from the UK instead of here? Anyway, later on CIA finds out in 02 that he was lying. We need prosecutions.

[Vahuman]

04:54 PM on 02/16/2011

Oh, so all the decision makers were duped by "curveball"? And the sorry part is, a lot of people will beieve this excuse.

To curve, do you think the close to 1 million or more people who lost their lives are "proud" of you saying what was wanted to be heard too? You're just an excuse, if it werent you they would have found someone else to blame it on.

[kolach]

02:54 PM on 02/16/2011

Lies are not worth lives. I wonder what it's like to have the weight of 100,000+ deaths on your shoulders?

[FCBarca]

01:18 PM on 02/16/2011

The bigger lie, of course, is the preposterous claims that the UK & US 'analysts' were unaware that 'curveball' was lying to begin with

If you buy that, I've got some prime Florida swampland for sale...A bargain really

[TeeSC]

04:13 PM on 02/16/2011

Exactly.  I certainly hope no one expects to give Bush a bye because of this. 

[More Left than Liberal]

12:07 PM on 02/16/2011

I find this to be a rather revisionist narrative

This story is trying to present Bush as being a victim of this person's lies when in actuality Bush put him up to it
They were even caught forging evidence; the so called yellow cake stuff. There is no way they can get away with pretending they believed the WMD claims

[MightyObjectiveObserver]

12:06 PM on 02/16/2011

In the movie "In the loop" they had "Iceman" feeding encouraging BS for the warmongers whose minds were made up. Scary how similar that comedy is to reality, even scarier how large enough portion of the public can be duped into anything.

[albiecoyote]

11:28 AM on 02/16/2011

The only way to combat the lies of the defector was for Saddam Hussein to have really opened up inspections to the UN instead of stonewalling and arrogantly thinking he could still bluff the world community.
There has always been disinformation.

[Gus DiZerega]

03:05 PM on 02/16/2011

You ignore the context entirely.

[FightingTheRight]

03:55 PM on 02/16/2011

Why would secular dictator, surrounded by countries controlled by religious fanatics, with a 150,000 troop Kurdish army inside Iraq's borders want them to know he didn't have WMDs?

[Peter Rose]

10:48 AM on 02/16/2011

The Germans named him Curveball, because the KNEW he was lying. The Americans were very happy to use whatever he said for their own purposes. I agree that we need to throw Powell in with the war criminals. He went to the UN with phony drawings of the supposed mobile weapons labs (HA!). He knew he was lying. Some folks in the media pointed all this out at the time! Randi Rhodes, Franken, etc., but there was too much money to be made by by corporations by going to war. Still costing you and me 1 trillion per year and counting.

[tacevad]

10:08 AM on 02/16/2011

the fix was in before 9-11 the Bushco plans were made long before that to invade Iraq

[Meesterclean]

09:59 AM on 02/16/2011

If he lied about the reasons to go to war, then why is he not in jael and why would he be given asylum unless the Bush Administration was in on it?

[OldTulsan]

04:04 PM on 02/16/2011

Because the Rule of Law is dead. For example, bankers who launder drug money are only fined...

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=asU.b_fCjHTE
Wachovia's Drug Habit - Bloomberg.com

"...The bank didn’t react quickly enough to the prosecutors’ requests and failed to hire enough investigators, the U.S. Treasury Department said in March. After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.

Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia’s new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.

[snip]

‘No Capacity to Regulate’

Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory.

Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering.

The theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks, Blum says.

“There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure,” Blum says. “They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line, until they’re caught...”

More than 22,000 dead and just fines.

[Jced]

09:45 AM on 02/16/2011

150,000 Iraqies and over 4,000 American soldiers are Dead...! And he's proud.

[IfIonlyknew]

12:24 PM on 02/16/2011

As proud as bush and cheney are.Lets put these guys in jail.

[Kate Zeiss]

09:38 AM on 02/16/2011

Bush admin would've run with this story if it had been delivered by the Pink Panther . . .

[banker67]

10:39 AM on 02/16/2011

Kate, I'm inclined to agree. Everything I've read -- which ain't all that much -- suggests Cheney was preparing to invade Iraq from day one. The He-man War Team was looking for any excuse. And everything was well underway by the time they came up with this individual specimen.
We who actually have to pay taxes might also wonder that the White House, the Pentagon and the trillion-dollar spookaucracy would instantly agree to plan, launch and sustain two full-scale invasions of other nations on the other side of the planet on the strength of one person's say-so.
I'm afraid the only explanations that hold up are the simplest: Cheney and Big Oil -- along with thousands of big war profiteers and international funds -- wanted better control over Middle East oil and Afghanistan's pipeline routes and heroin trade. So they made up all kinds of propaganda baloney, fed it into the nation's media propaganda machine and bankrupted our country, financially and morally. Oh, and killed a few hundred thousand innocent people. Did I mention that? Well, they did.
On the plus side, the guys who did this are all very rich.

[Kate Zeiss]

11:30 AM on 02/16/2011

Halliburton had a terrific 4Q10 . . .

BTW, love the "spookaucracy" can I use it sometime?

[roninroshi]

08:38 AM on 02/16/2011

This is old news...but the fact he has admitted to it is another reason Shrub and his cronies need to be jailed and put on trial as war criminals...Obama is continuing w/this horror using the Bush excuse of bring democracy to Iraq...what a joke it will never happen. Huge amounts of suffering continue as a country we are going broke over Bush's wars continued by Obama...the poor suffer the rich get richer and the middle class becomes 3rd world...this is beyond horrendous and disgusting...there is no pit in h**l deep enough for these warmongers.

[Amenusa]

04:30 PM on 02/20/2011

Nothing will be done about this. The Middle Class voted for this, twice! The Middle Class will reap what they sowed. Vote like 3rd Worlders, Live like 3rd Worlders. Luckily some 3rd Worlders lin Egypt are getting smart. What about America?

[jo smith456]

08:06 AM on 02/16/2011

(repost)
HOPE that one-day, they'll be prosecuted .
All those responsible for the Iraqi war (and all genocidal wars -- includes Gaza invasion), wherein hundreds of THOUSANDS DIED and MILLIONS Displaced, must be prosecuted ; probably not now but later. WAR CRIMES must never go unpunished . JUST LIKE THIS 96-year-ol d man: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/14/sandor-kepiro-hungarian-war-crimes_n_822862.html .
BTW, POWELL WAS PART of the Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz-etc., team. He shares the blame of the genocide that were committed against the Iraqi people. Make no mistake it. He MUST pay his dues!!!