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December 09, 2005
A False Rendition of al-Qaeda/Iraq Links
It seems that every day we learn more about the lies and distortions that went into (and continue to go into) the Iraq war.
This should be a biggie, but it probably won't be (and you can be sure all the "conservatives" will ignore or downplay it):
The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
There you have it: The U.S., under a policy begun under Bill Clinton and continued by George W. Bush, sent a prisoner to Egypt because he wouldn't talk. The Egyptians tortured him, as our government knew they would, and so he fabricated the entire Iraq-al Qaeda link story just to escape torture. Then our government went to war partly on the basis of these lies. If Bush and his whole administration don't deserve to be strung up for this war and all the lies surrounding it, then I'm Brad Pitt.
Posted by Mike Tennant at December 9, 2005 09:06 AM
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