First Iranian spy/Jordanian embezzler Chalabi, then (LOL) "Curveball," now comes the "Alibi" -- Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.
Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New DocumentAnd as for The Times' sourcing:
It shows that an al-Qaeda official held by the Americans was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the basis for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.
It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.
"The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," Jehl writes. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
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Libi is in custody, apparently at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was sent in 2003. According to Jehl, Secretary of State Colin Powell relied heavily on Libi for his speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda." HT: Huff Post
WHO: Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
WHAT: A newly declassified memo.
WHY: To show what cards were on the table behind the closed doors of the Senate.
When and Where is really a question of how long until impeachment hearings and where will the criminals in the White House do their time.
JEBUS! Atrios links an UPDATE FROM NEWSWEEK
They tortured the bastard into telling us what we wanted to hear. Fuckers.
Juan Cole sheds even more light on why it was down right criminal for the administration war-mongers to shovel this shit:
Moreover, other high-level al-Qaeda operatives such as Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah, who were far more important and informed than Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, were telling the same interrogators that Bin Laden had forbidden al-Qaeda operatives from cooperating with the secular Arab nationalist, Saddam Hussein . Their credible information, which tracked with the reality visible in arrests and the money trail, was suppressed by Bush and Cheney, whereas they trumpeted al-Libi's tall tales to the US public in order to build their case for an Iraq War.