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2005-11-06 13:58:46
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Tha presnit sez: "The other [v...,
2005-11-07 10:51:22
" Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training." --President Bush, February of 2003:
since August of 2004 we've known that the source for that claim was officially bullshitting us, and it was a pretty dubious claim to begin with. But we didn't know when they knew that the source was bullshitting them. Did analysts figure out he was bullshiting before or after, say, Bush said the above?
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.
To be repeated in multiple public statements a year later by Bush, Powell, and Cheney, absurdly linking in the public mind Al Qaeda and Saddam.
Is it a massive intelligence failure when the political leadership ignores the intelligence? Why would al-Libi ever think to tell CIA interrogators exactly what its political leadership wanted to hear?
Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.'"
FBI veteran Jack Cloonan has more to say on the general topic. The only failure on the intelligence community's part was not leaking this three years ago. Oh, and the whole torture thing. When in Cairo!
:: posted by buermann @ 2005-11-06 19:10:18 CST |
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