{"id":4684,"date":"2011-02-16T12:13:24","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T17:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4684"},"modified":"2011-02-16T12:15:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T17:15:32","slug":"scars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2011\/02\/16\/scars\/","title":{"rendered":"scars…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war<\/a>
guardian.co.uk<\/strong>
by Helen Pidd in Karlsruhe
15 February 2011<\/div>\n

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. Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.<\/p>\n

"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." The admission comes just after the eighth anniversary of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in which the then-US secretary of state relied heavily on lies that Janabi had told the German secret service, the BND. It also follows the release of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, in which he admitted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction programme.<\/p>\n

The careers of both men were seriously damaged by their use of Janabi’s claims, which he now says could have been – and were – discredited well before Powell’s landmark speech to the UN on 5 February 2003. The former CIA chief in Europe Tyler Drumheller describes Janabi’s admission as "fascinating", and said the emergence of the truth "makes me feel better". "I think there are still a number of people who still thought there was something in that. Even now," said Drumheller…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Remember?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
They say that, "Time heals all wounds.<\/font><\/strong>" But that doesn’t mean there’s not a scar left behind. I remember this one like it was yesterday. I watched Colin Powell’s U.N. speech on February 5, 2003 still hoping that the really bad feeling I had about the Iraq thing<\/font><\/strong><\/em> wasn’t true. That was the day I stopped believing that it was possible that we weren’t being duped by our own government. I never really believed all the stuff about Iraq from the January 2002 State of the Union "Axis of Evil<\/font><\/strong>" through the January 2003 "sixteen words<\/font><\/strong>," but I kept hoping they really had something.<\/div>\n

And so I watched Powell’s speech, and I read those New York Times articles by Judith Miller, actually hoping that I would hear something I could believe – and I didn’t. The scar is that the me <\/font><\/em><\/strong>that wanted to believe that our President and his pals were playing it straight will never again be able to feel that way again. Even with President Obama who I think is a straight shooter, I need to be shown. I thought Powell was a straight shooter too. The faith thing<\/font><\/strong> is over for me. Rocco Martino and his Niger forgeries aren’t what destroyed it, nor was it Curveball. The Bush Administration and Colin Powell did that. I know that Bush and Cheney used him, but it was his mouth moving on my t.v. set that day.<\/p>\n

So Curveball’s admissions don’t even really matter – any more than McNamara’s admissions mattered. Powell’s apologies don’t matter either. The scar is there for all times… <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war guardian.co.uk by Helen Pidd in Karlsruhe 15 February 2011 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}