So most of us have accepted (or knew all along) that the Iraq-Saddam-al Qaeda link was a bunch of crap. Why so many believed that al Qaeda fundamentalist would be aligned with secular Middle East Dictators is beyond me. I'd say a slim majority now realize this POV is wrong, however it is still used as a reason for taking out Bashar Asad in Syria. Why they can't find a better reason is beyond me. Probably has something to do with hypocrisy; you can't go after Syria for 'X' when you support Egypt or Pakistan who also do 'X'. I won't go into specific reasons because, IMO, the rhetoric against Syria is way overrated and coming from the dark depths of AEI and their warmongering wing.
Back to the 'connection'. It now looks like the idea of this connection; this 'rational for war'. Was so bogus that the Americans had to
torture detainees in order to get them to talk in terms worthy of going to war over.
The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and al-Qaida on detailed statements made by a prisoner 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-Qaida only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of al-Qaida members and others detained as part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and al-Qaida included training in explosives and chemical weapons.
Posted by Geoff
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