Iraqi defector whose phony WMD intel and "sexed up graphics" led to 100,000+ deaths: "Yes, I lied."

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, aka "Curveball", an Iraqi defector who falsified testimony about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, confirms that he made the whole thing up in an interview airing this week on the BBC2 TV series, "Modern Spies." The former chemical engineer's "confidence trick" was used by the Bush administration to justify going to war with Iraq in 2003.

Snip from The Independent:

But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him "we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie", he simply replies: "Yes."

US officials "sexed up" Mr Janabi's drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell's former chief of staff. "I brought the White House team in to do the graphics," he says, adding how "intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy".

You can watch the episode in entirety here, for a limited time—but alas, only if the BBC's web servers can be convinced that you're in the UK.

(via Doctrine Man).