Who could have foreseen , etc. etc.:
The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.
Whoopsie.
I'll sum it up for you: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball", lied about everything. He lied about the famous "mobile weapons labs" and biological weapons. And his lies were pretty much the basis of Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations prior to the war. Which means that they were pretty much the justification for the Iraq war.
Okay, so the fact that the Iraq war was built on lies is nothing new to most of us, but what's really striking about these new admissions is that al-Janabi himself says that his claims were discredited as far back as the year 2000:
Janabi claimed he was first exposed as a liar as early as mid-2000, when the BND [the German secret service] travelled to a Gulf city, believed to be Dubai, to speak with his former boss at the Military Industries Commission in Iraq, Dr Bassil Latif.
The Guardian has learned separately that British intelligence officials were at that meeting, investigating a claim made by Janabi that Latif's son, who was studying in Britain, was procuring weapons for Saddam.
That claim was proven false...
So, end of story, right?
The German officials returned to confront him with Latif's version. "He says, 'There are no trucks,' and I say, 'OK, when [Latif says] there no trucks then [there are none],'" Janabi recalled.
The guy's been outed as a liar. That's the end of his career as an informant, right?
He said the BND did not contact him again until the end of May 2002. But he said it soon became clear that he was still being taken seriously.
I don't really want to quote any more from the article, so I encourage you to read it for yourself. There is also a video interview, which can be viewed here.
In summary, al-Janabi is unrepentant, believing his lies helped liberate Iraq, but in the larger context his personal views are irrelevant. What's striking is the fact that German and British intelligence knew he was lying, but they kept coming back to him for more "information", no doubt at the direction of the U.S., which was looking for any excuse to invade Iraq.
The really new thing here is that now we have proof that "Curveball" was known to be a liar long before that infamous U.N. speech.