As US secretary of state, Colin Powell gathered his notes in front of the United Nations security council, the man watching – Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the west’s intelligence services as “Curveball” – had more than an inkling of what was to come. He was, after all, Powell’s main source, a man his German handlers had feted as a new “Deep throat” – an agent so pivotal that he could bring down a government.
Except…
Everything he had said about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons programme was a flight of fantasy – one that, he now claims was aimed at ousting the Iraqi dictator. Janabi, a chemical engineering graduate who had worked in the Iraqi industry, says he looked on in shock as Powell’s presentation revealed that the Bush administration’s hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed the lot. Something else left him even more amazed; until that point he had not met a US official, let alone been interviewed by one.
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He says that [in 2000] around three weeks after he was granted asylum, a German official, whom he identified as Dr Paul, came to see him. On his application, he had said he had worked as a chemical engineer, a fact that attracted extra attention.
“He told me he needed some information about my life. He said it was very important, that Iraq had a dictator and I needed to help.”
At this point, according to Curveball, he decided to let his imagination run wild. For the next six months, he sat with Paul – the BND’s resident expert on weapons of mass destruction – and calling upon his knowledge of chemical engineering from university and from his work in Baghdad, he manufactured a tale of dread.
We went to war largely on a lie. The Bush Administration either believed the lie or allowed themselves to use the lie in order to justify war. Personally, I believe George W. Bush wanted to finish what his father started and would have found any excuse. He found it in Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi.
Read the whole article and weep: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…
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