Key Iraq War Source Admits He Made It All Up

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Jim Newell

02/15/11 05:41PM

Filed to: Intelligence

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector under Saddam Hussein whose claims about the former dictator's mobile biological weapons programs were used heavily in the Bush Administration's public case for war, has an interesting story to tell everyone. The source, who, under the alias "Curveball" in intelligence reports, provided a foundation for Secretary of State Colin Powell's famous speech to the United Nations a month before the Iraq invasion, admits that he just made it up to get Hussein out of power.

From the Guardian:

"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."

He doesn't have much to be ashamed of. He just didn't care for Saddam Hussein and saw an opportunity. It was the intelligence community and presidential administration who moved his report to the top of the pile and then stopped looking.

[Image via AP]

The following replies are approved. To see additional replies that are pending approval, click Show Pending. Warning: These may contain graphic material.

Sherlock Homey 02/15/11 07:47PM

So basically, if you don't like a country, and you want to bring the full force of the US Military down on it, all you have to do is pretend you are an insider from that country, make some crap about WMDs up and squeal it to the Pentagon?

Moo Juice (Librul Moon Bat) 02/15/11 08:05PM

If the president is an alcoholic Republican with daddy issues and a tiny dick, then yes, that would work. For leaders with brains and integrity, then no.

Thomas_1L_ 02/15/11 08:32PM

"The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense. " - March 12, 2006, The New York Times.

In other words, he lied to us, he lied to his own people. If he came clean, then he would be alive today.

Washington — Defense Secretary William Cohen says the burden of proof is on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to show that he is in full compliance with all relevant United Nations resolutions concerning the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. After seven years of deceit, deception and delay, Cohen said, Iraq cannot be trusted. "The world agrees that Saddam must fully comply with these inspections" by the U.N. Special Commission "or else" he faces the severest consequences, Cohen said. - 17 March 1998 fas dot org / news

The burden of proof was on Hussein to prove that he aided to the conditions of the cease-fire of 1991. That was true then, it was true in 1998 and it was true up until the 2003 invasion.

eyrieowl 02/15/11 08:33PM

@moonybattyjuicey: It also helps if pretty much every member of the administration feels sore about not bombing said country to the stone age 10 years earlier and is yearning for another go at it.

Sherlock Homey 02/15/11 10:25PM

So if the leader of a country has the burden of proof to show . . . something something . . . and said leader does not do that, then it's open season? Also, and I'm not defending Saddam here, but the United Nations declared he shouldered this particular burden. The UN. UN Resolutions go in the unopened mail pile, right next to unwanted credit card offers and coupon circulars.

ElaborateEnduringEnvy 02/15/11 06:07PM

I really just want to hear the crying/horrible arguments from the people who defended Bush.

GreatBallsOFire 02/15/11 07:18PM

Now listen here, you whippersnapper. What happend, was... well... but, but, but... Nevermind.

gallaxian7 02/15/11 07:21PM

Have our intelligence agencies done much better predicting or interpreting the events in Tunisia or Egypt? To what degree are their current shortcomings Obama's fault?

ElaborateEnduringEnvy 02/15/11 07:26PM

I'm not defending Obama, did I say anything about him? I'm one of those people who doesn't think and never thought we should be in the Middle East period. I'm only making a witty remark about the people who were so quick to defend and rationalize Bush's decisions in office because they have a stereotype of not giving up fights, even when evidence is presented that they are wrong.

gallaxian7 02/15/11 07:36PM

Our intelligence was bad then and evidently it's bad now. I'm not inclined to blame Bush or Obama for the failures of our intelligence agencies, though.

pseudorocket 02/16/11 05:40AM

Is it too late to arrest this guy & charge with something that can lead to capital punishment?? If not, would someone please just assassinate him so to set an example to others not to drag the rest of the world into bloody conflicts for pure, greedy personal gains??

MilesEndymion 02/16/11 11:12AM

Um...whut? This guy is one of presumably hundreds of not thousands of informants, sources, civilians, local experts, etc., whose opinions, beliefs, and claims are to be EVALUATED by our intelligence community. I mean, to begin with, "arrest this guy," um...under what jurisdiction? Is Iraq going to extradite him to the US? He's not a US citizen. What crime would he be charged for? Giving the Bush administration the just the excuse it was looking for to start a war it was going to start anyway?

This has nothing to do with this guy. I'm tempted to say our intelligence services and legislative branch share the blame for this, and they do in a sense, both for not sufficiently vetting this guy's story, and for passing the Iraq resolution, respectively. And they do share some measure of the blame, but in the former case, recommendations against trusting this and similar intelligence was ignored, and in the latter, the Executive branch actively and intentionally misled the legislative branch and the country by exploiting fear of terrorism, challenging patriotism, and lying.

I wish people like you could learn to think critically.

camaron 02/16/11 12:11PM

Yes we should. Especially because our intelligence community has no responsibility to, you know, check its sources.

pseudorocket 02/16/11 12:31PM

It's a different administration now & Obama has already demonstrated that he's not afraid to resort to assassination. Of course, it's a free game too for Sunni's who got displaced to Europe due to the war, now that he's come out openly so probably not hard to find.

The same should apply to all other collaborators / informants. Would be quite glad to see them all got assassinated, at a minimum, to appease Karma...

38thsignal 02/17/11 08:14PM

Er... the German BND told Washington that the guy was not reliable, and Washington just elected to not listen. Didn't want to listen, actually. On 9/12, W told advisers to "find a way to pin this on Saddam", so it's not like anyone was trying hard to find evidence to not get into a bloody conflict for The Carlyle Group's corporate gain.

Trai_Dep 02/15/11 07:43PM

Is there any way for the Republicans to award the Medal of Freedom to al-Janabi?

It seems their standard operating procedure for individuals responsible for shoehorning the United States into ruinously expensive, unnecessary wars killing thousands of American soldiers that their leadership foisted upon a credulous public and Congress.

camaron 02/15/11 09:15PM

Yes, because it wasn't totally obvious that this guy was lying. This guy had about as much to do with the US going to war as my pet cat.

Trai_Dep 02/16/11 02:12AM

Are you high? al-Janabi is "Curveball". If you haven't heard of him, or the multiple warnings about relying on him, you have no business commenting in this sphere.

Sorry.

camaron 02/16/11 12:07PM

the multiple warnings about relying on him

This is precisely why they should not have relied on his information. Are you capable of thinking at this level? Anyone with two functioning neurons knows the neocons were willing to run with any bit of intelligence, no matter the quality, as an excuse to invade Iraq. You should really work on your reading comprehension skills if you wish to comment in this sphere, pal. Seriously, if my cat could speak, and believed Iraq had WMDs, then Rummy and pals would have used him as a source. Grow up, moron.

Sorry.