Iraqi Defector Admits Lying About WMDs

When Colin Powell gave his speech at the UN in February 2003 insisting that Iraq had biological weapons of mass destruction, he relied heavily on intelligence from a source codenamed “Curveball.” Well now Curveball, aka Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, tells the Guardian that he flat out made all of it up, in the hopes of ousting Saddam Hussein. “Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he says, in admitting to the lies for the first time. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime.”

Janabi was questioned by German intelligence, which he describes as gullible. “Any engineer who studied in this field can explain or answer the questions they asked,” he says. Moreover, they had ample time to debunk his lies—as early as mid-2000 parts of his story were proven false. Still, he’s not going to apologize for starting a war. “I tell you something, when I hear anybody—not just in Iraq but in any war—is killed, I am very sad. But … there was no other way to bring about freedom.” (More Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi stories.)