Rick Santorum on Obama's Handling of Syria Crisis

Former presidential candidate sounds off

Listening Post: Déjà vu in Syria

As the media talks of WMDs and calls for intervention, have journalists already forgotten the lessons from Iraq?

Lies That Launched a War
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was sanctioned largely because of claims the country had weapons of mass destruction. The source of some of the alleged intelligence behind the claims was an Iraqi defector living in Germany, someone who has now admitted the evidence he submitted was false. Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips reports

Curveball Could Face Jail for War-mongering, Says German MP
THE GUARDIAN: Agent whose lies about Saddam's weapons capability led to Iraq war has broken German law, says Green MP

A German politician has warned that the agent known as Curveball could go to jail after telling the Guardian that he lied about Saddam Hussein's bioweapons capability to "liberate" Iraq.

Green MP Hans-Christian Ströbele said that Curveball, a 43-year-old Iraqi dissident named Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, had arguably violated a German law that makes war-mongering illegal.

He also said that Gerhard Schröder, chancellor of Germany at the start of the Iraq war, should also reveal what he knew about the quality of evidence Curveball gave to Germany's secret service, the BND.

Under section 26 of German constitutional law, it is a criminal offence to do anything "with the intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially anything that leads to an aggressive war", said Ströbele. >>> Helen Pidd in Berlin | Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Curveball: How US Was Duped by Iraqi Fantasist Looking to Topple Saddam
THE GUARDIAN: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi let imagination run wild and became main source for Colin Powell's case for war in 2003

In a small flat in the German town of Erlangen in February 2003, an out-of-work Iraqi sat down with his wife to watch one of the world's most powerful men deliver the speech of his career on live TV.

As US secretary of state, Colin Powell gathered his notes in front of the United Nations security council, the man watching — Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the west's intelligence services as "Curveball" — had more than an inkling of what was to come. He was, after all, Powell's main source, a man his German handlers had feted as a new "Deep throat" — an agent so pivotal that he could bring down a government.

As Curveball watched Powell make the US case to invade Iraq, he was hiding an admission that he has not made until now: that nearly every word he had told his interrogators from Germany's secret service, the BND, was a lie.

Everything he had said about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programme was a flight of fantasy - one that, he now claims was aimed at ousting the Iraqi dictator. Janabi, a chemical engineering graduate who had worked in the Iraqi industry, says he looked on in shock as Powell's presentation revealed that the Bush administration's hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed the lot. Something else left him even more amazed; until that point he had not met a US official, let alone been interviewed by one.

"I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime," he told the Guardian in a series of interviews carried out in his native Arabic and German. "I and my sons are proud of that, and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy." >>> Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd in Karlsruhe | Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Watch Guardian video here

Lockerbie Bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed alMegrahi Linked to Libya’s Chemical Weapons
THE SUNDAY TIMES: THE man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was implicated in the purchase and development of chemical weapons by Libya, according to documents produced by the American government.

The papers also claim that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed alMegrahi sought to buy 1,000 letter bombs from Greek arms dealers while working as a Libyan intelligence officer.

The documents, prepared by the US State Department, raise further questions about the wisdom of the Scottish government in releasing the convicted bomber on compassionate grounds in August.

The documents, written in 1992, were based on information gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency to bolster the case against Libya for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 which killed 270 people.

They claim that Megrahi’s “deep involvement in Libya’s most sensitive, high-priority procurement operations indicates that he enjoyed the fullest confidence of Libya’s leadership”. >>> Mark Macaskill | Sunday, November 29, 2009

Blair Lied and Lied Again: Mandarins Reveal that 10 Days Before Iraq Invasion PM Knew Saddam Couldn't Use WMDs
MAIL ONLINE: The full extent of how Tony Blair misled the public about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction before and after the Iraq War was laid bare yesterday.

The Chilcot Inquiry heard that just ten days before the invasion of Iraq Mr Blair was told Saddam had no way of using weapons of mass destruction.

And weapons experts revealed that the former Prime Minister took Britain to war based on intelligence that his own spies rated just 'four out of ten' for accuracy.

On the eve of the conflict, intelligence chiefs told Mr Blair that the Iraqi dictator had no warheads capable of delivering chemical weapons, dramatically undermining the Prime Minister's case for war.

Yet Mr Blair gave the go-ahead for the invasion despite strong evidence that Iraq was no threat to Britain.

Then, after the war, officials had to tell Mr Blair not to 'declare success too rapidly' in the quest to find WMD in Iraq as he continued to make misleading statements claiming that 'massive evidence' had been found.

The revelations reinforce the case that intelligence evidence that Saddam was no threat was ignored by Mr Blair to take Britain to war on a false prospectus. >>> Tim Shipman | Thursday, November 26, 2009

Hussein Pointed to Iranian Threat: Specter of Arms Allowed Him to Appear Strong, He Told U.S.
THE WASHINGTON POST: Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."

Former president George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. Administration officials at the time also strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Hussein, who was often defiant and boastful during the interviews, at one point wistfully acknowledged that he should have permitted the United Nations to witness the destruction of Iraq's weapons stockpile after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. >>> Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer | Thursday, July 02, 2009