Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector under Saddam Hussein whose claims about the former dictator's mobile biological weapons programs were used heavily in the Bush Administration's public case for war, has an interesting story to tell everyone. The source, who, under the alias "Curveball" in intelligence reports, provided a foundation for Secretary of State Colin Powell's famous speech to the United Nations a month before the Iraq invasion, admits that he just made it up to get Hussein out of power.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan (left), the Iraqi refugee code-named "Curveball" whose nonsense reports about Saddam Hussein's mobile bio weapons labs to German Intelligence officers helped pave the way for invasion, is speaking publicly for the first time. And he's pissed. "'For what I've done, I should be treated like a king,' he said outside a cramped, low-rent apartment he shares with his family [somewhere in Germany]. Instead, the Iraqi informant [...] has flipped burgers at McDonald's and Burger King, washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant and baked pretzels in an all-night bakery. He also has faced withering international scorn for peddling discredited intelligence that helped spur an invasion of his native country. Now, in his first public comments, the 41-year-old engineer from Baghdad complains that the CIA and other spy agencies are blaming him for their mistakes."

Hold on to your pomade, the Islamofascists are coming! The ever-strengthening case for war against Iran became nigh-airtight this morning with the Wall Street Journal's front- page story detailing the Islamic Republic's latest assault on freedom. Religious police, reports Andrew Higgins, are cracking down with unprecedented brutality, denying Iranian citizens even such basic human rights as coiffure choice and manscape self-determination: