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Feb 15th, 2011


‘Curveball’: I Lied About WMD to Hasten Iraq War

Defector admits he fabricated information to try to bring down Saddam regime


Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi: ‘I would do whatever was possible’
Link to this video at The Guardian


February 15, 2011

LONDON — An Iraqi defector who went by the codename “Curveball” [link added] has publicly admitted for the first time that he made up stories about mobile bioweapons trucks and secret factories to try to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“I had a problem with the Saddam regime,” Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who fled Iraq in 1995, told The Guardian newspaper. “I wanted to get rid of him and now I had this chance.”

Al-Janabi’s information was used in part by the U.S. as justification for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. More than 100,000 people, most of them Iraqi civilians, have died in the war. The U.S. began to withdraw its troops from Iraq last summer.

Janabi said he was comfortable with what he did, despite the war that ensued.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he told the Guardian. “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.” …

Despite his earlier disputed statements, al-Janabi said, Gerrman and U.S. authorities continued to take him seriously. …

Tyler Drumheller, the former head of the CIA in Europe, said Curveball’s admission made him feel better about himself.

Drumheller, who says he warned his superiors at the CIA before the 2003 invasion that Curveball might be a liar, said the confession would be a final wake-up call for those who continue to insist there had been weapons of mass destruction.

“The interesting part for me is that he has recanted what he said, which is fascinating in the sense that I think there are still a number of people who still thought there was something in that. Even now,” Drumheller told the Guardian.

Full story

Read the full report of how the U.S. was duped at The Guardian

———

Related reports on this site

Iraq War on Trial (Jan. 29, 2010)

Video

Tony Blair says he has no regrets over Iraq war (MSNBC, Jan. 29, 2010) — Tony Blair appeared before a public inquiry seeking to learn lessons from the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. (03:17)

Bush-Cheney ‘Hell Bent’ on War (Nov. 27, 2009)

Image: Anti-war protesters
Anti-war protesters from the Stop the War group wear masks depicting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, right, former President George W. Bush, center, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, left. They posed for photographers Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009 outside the conference center where the Iraq war inquiry was taking place in central London. (Photo credit: Lefteris Pitarakis / AP)

Iraq War Plan Soon After 9/11 (Nov. 22, 2009)


Protesters hold placards with the words ‘No Cover Up’ and ‘No More Lies’ as they demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament in London, June 15, 2009. (Photo credit: Shaun Curry / AFP — Getty Images)

Bush Rewriting History on Iraq? (Jan. 13, 2009)


Some of the documents turned over to the U.N. by Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion.

Iraq: Intelligence and Policy Failure (Dec. 10, 2008)

Video

Bush is history (MSNBC, Dec. 9, 2008) — Countdown’s Keith Olbermann lists why White House talking points designated to cast President Bush in a positive light actually serve as a reminder of the president’s many faults and shortcomings. (04:51)

Iraq ‘Biggest Regret’ — Bush (Dec. 2, 2008)

Video

Bush’s exit interview (NBC Nightly News, Jan. 12, 2009) — President George W. Bush delivered an at-times defiant speech in which he expressed regret and discussed some mistakes he has made while in office. Chuck Todd reports. (04:00)

———

FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — February 15, 2010

Glenn Beck’s Fake Crying Routine

One year ago today, I reported that the incendiary rhetoric of demagogues like Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann is powerful because it slips through the cracks in our acculturated human rationality, with its biological substrates in the fontal cortex.

———

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Two Years Ago — February 15, 2009

Feds Widen Iraq Corruption Probe


Dale C. Stoffel, an American contractor in Iraq, described cash delivered in pizza boxes and payoffs dropped in paper sacks. (Photo courtesy of David Stoffel)

Two years ago today, on Feb. 15, 2009, I reported that federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq had significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program.





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