Curveball Comes Clean
You may remember “Curveball.” He’s the Iraqi defector whose lies about Saddam’s weapons programs helped spur the Iraq war. He spun tales of mobile weapons labs and secret WMD factories — tales that were music to the ears of Bush administration officials seeking a pretext for invasion. The disinformation he provided even ended up in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s infamous presentation to the U.N.
In an extraordinary interview in The Guardian, Curveball comes clean, admitting his lies and talking about his motivation:
Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right. 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.
Read the whole thing. It’s a fascinating look at a man who saw an opportunity to change history, and seized it: “I had a problem with the Saddam regime,” he tells the newspaper. “I wanted to get rid of him and now I had this chance.”