‘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

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