"Curveball"—The Iraqi Who Lied

This is a disturbing article.  Either our government didn’t know better than to trust an untrustworthy source or our government chose to ignore that fact in order to invade Iraq.  An Iraqi code named “Curveball” told American intelligence about WMDs that Saddam Hussein supposedly had.  He made up stories bioweapon trucks and factories that produced chemical weapons in order to get the U.S. to invade Iraq sooner.  Curveball is proud of his lies and said that since it helped Saddam be ousted sooner that there was nothing wrong with what he did.  This circumstance has many people questioning the credibility of our countries intelligence. 

Personally I believe that regardless of the reasons America would have invaded Iraq anyway.  In the post 9/11 atmosphere Americans overwhelmingly wanted to invade Afghanistan.  That fervor for action against those who were possibly a part of the attack, or those who possibly were aiding those terrorist had not died down.  This basic desire for revenge pushed us into Iraq.  If President Bush had come out and said that we invaded for revenge the opinion of the world would have turned against us.  If Bush had announced we were invading because Hussein was an evil dictator America would be expected to invade all the countries in the world with dictators who were cruel to their populace.  But, if Iraq had WMDs ready to be used against the American public, then the other countries of the world would be okay with the invasion of Iraq.  Curveball provided this information that helped justify the invasion, his credibility was ignored, in my opinion, because America needed an excuse to invade Iraq because their thirst for revenge had not yet been sated.