List of Latin phrases (I)

CURVEBALL

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• published: 03 Jul 2016
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To mark the publication of the Chilcot British Inquiry into the Iraq War of 2003 here's a song about the Iraqi defector and fraud Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi - known in the CIA and British MI6 intelligence agencies by the cryptonym "Curveball". His lies and fantasies were the sole unconfirmed and unverified source behind US and British Government claims about the existence of mobile germ warfare trucks in Iraq - the so called weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Those falsehoods were to elevated to the status of "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by US Secretary of State General Colin Powell , in his now infamous presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5 , 2003. As the world knows now , no WMD were found in Iraq after the 2003 war .The claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy refined uranium ore called "yellowcake" from Niger in Africa was also found to be the result of forged documents . Al-Janabi was granted asylum in Germany in 2001. One of his lies concerned a warehouse at the Djerf al Nadaf seed purification facility, 10 miles south east of Baghdad where he worked briefly before he was sacked in 1995. This is where he claimed his mythical germ warfare trucks were able to enter and exit by hidden doors. When the site was visited by United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) inspectors on February 9, 2003, they found warehouse was surrounded by a permanent 6 foot high wall that made it impossible for vehicles to exit and enter. No trace of bio weapons were found at the site and the inspectors found the warehouse had been used for seed processing. A further lie was his claim of an accident at Djerf al-Nadaf in 1998 that killed 12 bio-warfare technicians. There was no such incident. When so-called "bio weapons" trucks were found In Iraq , they discovered they produced hydrogen to inflate artillery balloons. In May 2004, over a year after the invasion of Iraq, the CIA concluded formally that Curveball's information was fabricated. On June 26, 2006, The Washington Post reported that "the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels." His reports were all subject to a "burn notice" - essentially telling other agencies he was an unreliable source. It's now widely accepted Curveball's fantasy was fuelled by reading "open source" internet reports of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq and others before he defected in 1999. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter , who quit the UN in 1998 , said :" We created a mythology of the mobile labs. We postulated their existence. And they became reality. But we never found any evidence. None." Curveball still lives in Germany and wasn't called as a witness in Sir John Chilcott's British Iraq War Inquiry. Some US and British spies held serious doubts and concerns about the unconfirmed Curveball reports many months before the start of "Shock and Awe" . Those at the top ignored such concerns about the lack of verification . To "please the boss" they gave them what they wanted to hear. I wrote "Curveball" after reading an interview he gave the The Guardian newspaper in 2011. He claimed then his lies were worth it to rid his country of Saddam Hussein. I thought it was strange that he'd come out of the long grass after so long. I didn't buy the convenient justification for his lies. I did wonder who was still pulling his strings.... For those who want to know more I recommend the book "Curveball" by brave Los Angeles Times journalist Bob Drogin ( brilliantly assisted by Amercian investigative reporter John Goetz) . It was written in 2007 , before we knew Curveball's real identify. It's published by Random House in the US the Ebury Press in the UK. Curveball : a baseball expression for ball that veers to the left when thrown the right hand and vice versa when thrown by the left hand. Slang : something unexpected and or designed to trick or deceive.