Owen reports: "'Curveball', the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war."
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction were used as justification for the Iraq war. (photo: The Independent UK)
Man Whose WMD Lies Led to Iraq War Confesses
01 April 12
Defector tells how US officials 'sexed up' his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion
man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.
He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him "we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie", he simply replies: "Yes."
US officials "sexed up" Mr Janabi's drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell's former chief of staff. "I brought the White House team in to do the graphics," he says, adding how "intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy".
As for his former boss: "I don't see any way on this earth that Secretary Powell doesn't feel almost a rage about Curveball and the way he was used in regards to that intelligence."
Another revelation in the series is the real reason why the FBI swooped on Russian spy Anna Chapman in 2010. Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama's inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI's head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got "closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership... she got close enough to disturb us".
The fear that Chapman would compromise a senior US official in a "honey trap" was a key reason for the arrest and deportation of the Russian spy ring of 10 people, of which she was a part, in 2010. "We were becoming very concerned," he says. "They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue." Mr Figliuzzi refuses to name the individual who was being targeted.
Several British spies also feature in the programme, in the first time that serving intelligence officers have been interviewed on television. In contrast to the US intelligence figures, the British spies are cloaked in darkness, their voices dubbed by actors. BBC veteran reporter Peter Taylor, who worked for a year putting the documentary together, describes them as "ordinary people who are committed to what they do" and "a million miles" from the spies depicted in film. He adds: "What surprised me was the extent to which they work within a civil service bureaucracy. Everything has to be signed off... you've got to have authorisation signed in triplicate."
Would-be agents should abandon any Hollywood fantasies they may have, says Sonya Holt at the CIA recruitment centre. "They think it's more like the movies, that they are going to be jumping out of cars and that everyone carries a weapon... Yes we're collecting intelligence but we don't all drive fast cars. You're going to be writing reports; you're in meetings so it's not always that glamorous image of what you see in the movies."
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Comments
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For establishing credibility with your American readers, you might have avoided this publication date.
April 1, 2012
Republicans Reveal that Entire Presidential Race was a Prank
andy@borowitzreport.com
We who argue "See? No WMD!" should be careful to acknowledge that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of our military demolitions specialists were charged with the destruction of hundreds, if not thousands, of tons of noxious chemical compounds that were the binary precursors to Saddam's toxic cocktails.
Those returning vets give powerful, personal testimony to the fact that they did (stupidly, in retrospect, by simply blowing the stuff up into the environment) render unusable Saddam's lethal stores.
Here's where we must be careful to state:
that WMDs were indeed found... exactly where the Iraquis said they would be, all declared in that pre-invasion testimony
presented to the U.N.
As Hans Blix notes in his signal work,
"Disarming Iraq" (c. 2004, p. 29),the Chief Inspector of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) states that he is "...not aware...that any significant amount of weapons or nuclear material was ever found hidden" (on sites that had not been declared).
You're right; I've confused time lines. The weapon destruction took place mid-1990s.
One day on her doggie stroll, the Republican lady from the next block (at the house plastered with "I stand with Governor Walker" signs) struck up a conversation with me about the Iraq invasion, proud army grandma that she is.
When I mentioned that no WMDs were found,
she staunchly declared, "That's a lie! My grandson was there blowing them up!"
Such, then, is my argument about no undeclared WMDs ever found.
Thus I repeat, the most accurate claim is that there were no UNDECLARED caches of weaponry. What remnants our forces may have found were right where the Iraqis said they would be.
By late 2002, the Iraqis had indeed revealed all sites, opening them to Blix's inspection teams in the futile hope that an invasion could be forestalled.
With all such sites declared, inspected and verified, secured, and monitored, there would be no justification for military action. But Bush withdrew the UNMOVIC team, allowing him to continue the WMD accusations with no way of disproving them.
Thanks, Aggie. I hope this brings me closer to the accepted view.
Thanks for the correction that was poised and gentle.
This guy should be added to names of Bush, Blair, Cheney, et al to swell the war criminals for prosecution list.
I can't wait until the next "Veterans for Peace" meeting when they get ahold of this.
And anybody whose kids served in this illegal and illegitimate conflict should feel as outraged and conned by this too, no matter what they originally believed. I personally know a couple of families who already have come to the truth and asked their kids to go to "Veterans for Peace". Support them as best you can -and those who made it back.
That's all I can think of -except thanks to the "BEEB" for getting the truth out of this cove, whom I never trusted from day one.
The real responsibility lies with Cheney, Bush, Rumsfelt, and their neocon Project for a New American Century conspirators who broke federal laws by deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Iraq for the purpose of using American military might to achieve their personal political goals.
Documented: The IBC's toll counts only reported deaths; because of the Islamic custom of quick burials, many deaths went uncounted during the early tank-lead firestorm.
Civilian: The IBC numbers do not tabulate Iraqi military killed nor deaths inflicted on one another by Sunni/Shia militants.
Violent: Only bullet- and bomb-induced fatalities make the IBC list. Death by illness from water-borne diseases because of destroyed sewage systems, from delayed or unavailable medical attention, from malnutrition, or radiation poisoning from depleted uranium weaponry goes unattributed.
The Lancet study simply counted increased deaths by all causes. Adding the "safe" IBC totals to the now 5-year-old Lancet statistics gives my front-yard fence its grim, monthly-updated , posted extrapolation: 722,025 excess post-invasion Iraqi deaths.
...OR, is the UK model more the reality?
several million dollars a month and communications equipment for Syrian rebels and opposition activists, signaling continuous involvement in the conflict amid a growing belief that we have to destroy Syria as we did Libya
U.Srael and its Western and Arab allies toward seeking to sway the military balance in Syria - rebels lost militarily - Killary continues killing - civil war.
Where are all OUR media? Report truth on today - NOT historical channel.
Whether or not Powell knew before hand that they were lies is something to look into. As you said, any reasonably intelligent person would know that they were fabrications, especially since German intelligence had flat out told the CIA that Curveball was lying. If Powell did know, and I personally believe that he did, he lost any credibility as a human being for not going onto the UN stage and flat out stating that this was all Bullhockey and the buildup to the war was a complete farce.
Someone described Powell as the most credible of the Bush cabinet who got "pushed to the microphone". The good soldier fell on his sword for the team where loyalty was the highest of virtues.
He indeed lost so much.
However while I listened to Powell's bullshit, much as did "Vermont grandma," below, I was screaming at the TV as Powell's lies were broadcast. Flabbergasted, I damn near fell off the treadmill I was walking on. I knew that half of what he was saying was lies, and the other half I wasn't sure about, but assumed that he wasn't telling the truth about that either.
That was a very accurate guess.
If he was "kept out of the loop," that would have been a choice of his own making. It would have required substantial effort on his part to ignore everything pertinent going on around him and a failure to ask questions about any of the clear implausibilities.
Powell is a 1% member, a millionaire. The appointment of his odious son as the head of the FCC was but one payoff for keeping his own counsel. He doesn't need anyone to make excuses for him. There's the blood of a million on his hands.
In fact, a majority of Democratic Senators voted against the October resolution, despite the "with the terrorists" bilge brought to the country by Bush, Cheney, Murdoch and the NY Times and Washington Post. In further fact, there was only one Senator who was up for reelection weeks later who had the guts to vote against it: Paul Wellstone who died shortly afterward.
Only a single Republican had the courage to resist: Lincoln Chafee. The "R"s tried to get rid of him for his honesty by funding a primary opponent in his next election.
If you think the "world fell in behind Bush," you're similarly mistaken. The "world" did not consist of that whore Tony Blair and his allies in the press and Parliament. You managed to miss speech after speech by such Foreign Ministers as the right wing Dominique de Villepin (France), the Green Party
Joschka Fischer (Germany) and left wing Igor Ivanov (Russia). Senator Bob Byrd, the 85-year-old spoke passionately on the floor against the illegal invasion.
Fifty-four countries opposed the war, most agreeing it was illegal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War
If you've slept through history, you should probably avoid pontificating about it.
Sadly, the Secretary of the UN at the time, Kofi Annan, probably also knew these claims were lies. But prior to the US & UK invasion he failed to galvanize the United Nations to take a vote declaring US and UK to be violation of international law by threatening unprovoked hostilities, despite millions of people demonstrating worldwide against US threats to go to war against Iraq.
I agree that this individual, and those who proceeded to war, should be held responsible for war crimes and the deaths of millions, abroad and here.... We have entered a time eerily reminiscent of George Orwell's description of civil live in his novel 1984.....
Obama and Eric Holder have been unwilling to prosecute the liars, thieves and murderers who looted Wall Street and led much of the world to war. They haven't been nearly as reticent when it comes to punishing whistleblowers who have disclosed the elements of the iniquity.
The prosecution of George W. Bush for murder / Vincent Bugliosi.
Bugliosi, Vincent.
c2008. xi, 344 p.
Powell knew CB was lying. He knew that Bush/Cheney were planning the war from the very beginning of his reign. Powell could have changed the whole trajectory of the war mongering if he had stood up in front of the UN and called out Bush/Cheney for what they were instead of repeating what he must have known were fabrications.
I spoke at length to Scott Ritter in August 2002, two months before the war resolution was pushed through Congress. He detailed chapter and verse, and how it was all bullshit.
When Powell spoke to the Security Council, I knew that at least half of his statements were lies. His contention that Saddam had something to do with 9/11 was nothing short of ludicrous. No one with any knowledge at all would have believed he and bin laden were allies: They were sworn enemies, an Islamic theocrat and a secularist Baathist.
He claimed that Saddam was supporting and tolerating the Ansar al-Islam camp in Northeast Iraq, and that it was part of al Qaida. It was fairly common knowledge that it wasn't true, and if anything, the camp was protected as it was in the no-fly zone the U.S. had established in the north, eliminating the possibility that Saddam could wipe it out.
Even though the bio-agents had long since degraded, Bush couldn't be sure. Capturing & destroying them was alluring. He would have & did lie independent of that, but he may actually have been worried. War was mainly a status building lark for him.
The truth is that Bush was Sarah Palin, wearing pants and with a better education, but a moron all the same, and even easier to manipulate.
From Fair.com...
Consider Bush's statement about Saddam Hussein, made at a joint press conference with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (7/14/03): "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." This charge, repeated at a joint press conference with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski (1/27/04), is an astonishingly brazen falsehood, given that U.N. inspectors were busily going about their work in Iraq with a great deal of publicity in the months before the U.S. invasion, yet it was not even reported by most media outlets. The New York Times, for instance, never mentioned it. The Washington Post's report on the comment (7/15/03) took pains to avoid calling it a lie, instead writing that the president's assertion "appeared to contradict the events."
The media's habit of tiptoeing around the truth and the patent refusal of many reporters to call things by their proper names prompted Paul Krugman,... to write this grim assessment (9/6/02):
The next time the administration insists that chocolate is vanilla, much of the media—fearing accusations of liberal bias, trying to create the appearance of "balance"—won't report that the stuff is actually brown; at best they'll report that some Democrats claim that it's brown.
It was downhill from there.
And if anybody is contemplating voting for the court jester Romoney$$ they should think long and hard what damage he will bring upon us with his repub ilk.
A team of scientists was sent to Iraq to examine the trailers. Their report came back to Washington before the White Paper was issued. It is still classified - although the Annex to the CIA's final report doubtless greatly reflects the findings of that team.
I have to think there is more to the story.
Is this a great country, or what? Now these same con men are trying to turn Trayvon Martin into the head gangbanger of the Miami Crips, while Zimmerman is portrayed as a put-upon Boy Scout Leader with a Glock. How long can I continue to read this stuff before I just blow up my desktop and watch old movies 24/7?
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