After over $200 billion has been spent, more than 80,000 people have lost their lives and nearly five years have come and gone, many Americans are still questioning why the United States entered a war with Iraq in the first place. The identity of the man, who, according to Bob Simon on 60 Minutes, pulled off “one of the deadliest con jobs of our time,” was recently released, stirring up even more controversy relating to the information that was used to initiate the war in Iraq.”This was a freelance guy, a nobody who sold a bag of goods that got filtered up to the highest levels,” said Robert Duncan, assistant professor of political science.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan, or better known as “Curve Ball,” played a leading role in providing the information that Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, President George W. Bush and many of our highest government officials used as their basis for declaring war on Iraq.

“Curve Ball was the one piece of evidence where they could say, ‘Look at this. If they have this capability, where they can transport biological weapons, anthrax, all these horrible weapons, they can attack our troops with them. They can give them to terrorist groups,'” said CIA senior official Tyler Drumheller in an interview with 60 Minutes.

60 Minutes recently made it more apparent to the American public that this war was based upon false pretenses, which may or may not have affected the government’s final decision.

“If they had not had Curve Ball they would have probably found something else,” Drumheller said, ” because there was a great determination to do it. But going to war in Iraq, under the circumstances we did, Curve Ball was the absolutely essential case.”

In 1999, “Curve Ball” told German intelligence that he had previously been a chemical engineer in Saddam’s Iraq and had been the director of a site called Djerf al Nadaf, just outside Baghdad. He said that the site was used to create mobile biological weapons, but as a cover was called a “seed purification plant.” Upon investigation, however, U.S. officials discovered that Curve Ball’s story could not be true.

“When the inspectors examined the facility, they found that this was an impossibility,” said Jim Corcoran, to 60 Minutes, whose job it was to relay intelligence to the inspectors in Iraq.

After Corcoran ran tests within the building for traces of biological agents that came out negative, it was obvious that Curve Ball’s story was unreliable.

“Attempts to verify the information have been unsuccessful. (Curve Ball’s reports) must be considered unconfirmed,” said German intelligence chief, Dr. August Hanning, in a letter written to George Tenet before the war. the letter was read on 60 Minutes. When Tenet was asked about the letter that was sent directly to him from German Intelligence, he said that he’d never seen it.

The war, however, began three weeks later.

“Curve Ball is just another indicator that the administration was running hard-pressed to support their forgone decision to go to Iraq,” said Robert Duncan, assistant professor of political science.

Now the American government faces the reality that they allowed a man with a made-up story play such a pivotal role in starting a war.

“I think for a long time we’ve known that the reasons we were given for going to war were not the real reasons,” said Maria Rosales, assistant professor of political science.

Nineteen out of 20 Guilford students asked do not think the U.S had a good enough reason to declare war on Iraq. Curve Ball is proof that that they may have not been looking for one.

“They had it made up in their mind as early as 2000,” Duncan said. “They built a case on sand and it has collapsed.