Curveball

Remember the Iraqi man code named Curveball? He’s the engineer who convinced the Bush administration that Iraq was developing chemical weapons – something thought to be a good reason to start a war. He lied:

What did Janabi lie about? Saddam Hussein’s secret biological weapons programme. Why did he do it? “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 explains.

That’s quite a bold claim after what Martin Chulov – the Guardian’s Baghdad correspondent – and Helen Pidd’s background report described as “more than 100,000 civilian deaths and a savage sectarian war.” It’s not a description I’d dispute, but others will.

Here’s the full story in the Guardian – how the U.S. was duped.