Wicked Curveball

So this "Curveball" guy finally admits to throwing the US government a ... spitball? And while his story was full of more holes than a Wiffle ball, the CIA director claimed the case for war was a "slam dunk."

Nice to see M. Curveball display the appropriate humility and remorse for the consequences of his fairy tale.

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.

"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."

[...]

"I had a problem with the Saddam regime," he said. "I wanted to get rid of him and now I had this chance."

[...]

With the US now leaving Iraq, Janabi said he was comfortable with what he did, despite the chaos of the past eight years and the civilian death toll in Iraq, which stands at more than 100,000.

[...]

"Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq. There were no other possibilities."

UPDATE: So how's that freedom in Iraq thing going, you ask? Well, they're hard at work rebuilding a monumental sculpture in Baghdad that glorifies Saddam Hussein, which is certainly an auspicious sign.

BAGHDAD — As hundreds of thousands in Egypt protested the iron rule of that country’s president, Iraq quietly began restoring a bronze fist of its former dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Without public announcement or debate, the authorities here ordered the reconstruction of one of the most audacious symbols in Baghdad of Mr. Hussein’s long, violent and oppressive rule: the Victory Arch, two enormous sets of crossed swords, clutched in hands modeled after his very own.

[...]

“We don’t want to be like Afghanistan and the Taliban and remove things like that,” Ali al-Mousawi, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said, referring to the infamous destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamian, Afghanistan, “or to be like the Germans and remove the Berlin Wall.”

“We are a civilized people,” he added, “and this monument is a part of the memories of this country.”

[Guardian] [NYT]