Give Up Blog

Friday, December 09, 2005

And now the other shoe drops...

If you're reading this post, it's assumed that you're one of the minority of Americans who knows that there's no credible link between Iraq and al Qaeda. And now we've found the source of those data:

The Times today tells that a prisoner was captured by the US in 2002 and turned over to Egypt for questioning.

"While he made some statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda when in American custody, the officials said, it was not until after he was handed over to Egypt that he made the most specific assertions, which were later used by the Bush administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.

...

He withdrew his claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in January 2004

...

[The prisoner] later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials
...

The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.

So now we have the first reports of a specific case where torturing a detainee was a really really bad thing to do. I wonder if this is just the tip of the iceberg?

1 Comments:

Rev. Dr. said...

It's interesting that the comment by Wolfgang P. in the torture story we blogged the other day is almost prophetic now.

5:30 PM, December 09, 2005