Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The reason we went to war in Iraq is dead; this man is the Bush admin in a nutshell.

This needs to be the lead story and on the front page of every news source around. This man's story brings out almost every single one of the most unbelievably messed up things the Bush admin did: war in Iraq, torture, rendition, Guantanamo.

Rendition? Torture? Proof that torture yields bad intell? Check, check and check.
After captured in 2001, Ibn al Sheikh al Libi was sent to Egypt via rendition, and after being almost buried alive for 17 hours, made up a story about Iraq and Al Qaeda and chemical weapons. (See Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.)

War in Iraq? Check:
Ibn al Sheikh al Libi is basically the reason we went to war in Iraq. The FALSE intelligence he coughed up, no pun intended, during one of Cheney's torture sessions was the only 'link' the admin had between Iraq and AQ: that Iraq provided chemical weapons training to AQ (bullshit). It is the same story Colin Powell brought before the UN.

Guantanamo? Worse, Libya.
After being returned to CIA custody in 2004 after his brief underground tour of Egypt, al Libi was mysteriously missing from the group of lucky guys sent to vacation in Cuba; the Post article I linked to above quotes Tom Malinowski of HRW, "I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration."

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