Known Al Qaeda liar used to build case for war

[Balta1701]

This may very well explain why Harry Reid decided on the Senate parliamentary maneuver earlier this week. The Democrats may have uncovered evidence that the Bush Administration used statements from a known Al Qaeda liar in building its case for war in Iraq.

 

Ever since the Democrats briefly closed the U.S. Senate from view earlier this week, to protest alleged Republican foot-dragging in probing Bush administration pre-war manipulation of intelligence, the press has been asking: So what new evidence do the Democrats have in this matter?

 

Tomorrow, The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Doug Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 

It shows that an al-Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation 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.

 

“Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that ‘we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’”

A White House spokeswoman said she had no immediate comment on the D.I.A. report.

 

Subpoena Power.

Edited November 5, 2005 by Balta1701

[FlaSoxxJim]

A fiction writer couldn't have put together a more outlandishly trecherous plotline than the one unfolding/unravelling now.

 

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

[DBAHO]

So it's been a good week for Bush hasn't it.

[Balta1701]

So it's been a good week for Bush hasn't it. 

They brought each and every one of these on themselves.

[Balta1701]

Here is the NYT Story I alluded to yesterday.

 

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said 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.

 

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. 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 8Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

 

Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.''

 

. . . Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.

[Punch and Judy Garland]

When a guy is known as Curveball, shouldn't you expect him not to be straightforward????????

[Balta1701]

When a guy is known as Curveball, shouldn't you expect him not to be straightforward????????

It's official...you'd make a better President than anyone currently in the Executive branch.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I believe " Curveball" was the Iraqi in the baseball cap pointing at a spot in the desert in a photo that Judy Miller used as 'proof' of WMDs in one of the NYT propaganda pieces in the run up to the war.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Oh yeah, and he was one of Chalabi's guys.