WRONG FROM THE START

PRISONERS QUESTIONED lie all the time.  The New York Times reports a story Bush knew of a lying prisoner months before it used his ”truth” to support the push for war in Iraq.  Is this what pushed Harry Reid to stunt his way to shutting down the Senate this week to investigate bogus pre war intelligence? [story/E&P]

It shows that an al-Qaeda official held by the Americans was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the basis for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.
It declared that 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, Jehl reports.
“The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility,” Jehl writes. “Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as ‘credible’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. 

REPUBLICANS HAVE MADE MUCH of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s conclusions regarding the White House use of dubious intelligence. [NY Times]

The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi's claims.

But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.

MORE COMPLETE information now will lead to more complete and accurate conclusions. Some of Bush’s claims will now receive more intense scrutiny.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Levin also called attention to another portion of the D.I.A. report, which expressed skepticism about the idea of close collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, an idea that was never substantiated by American intelligence agencies but was a pillar of the administration's prewar claims.

"Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements," the D.I.A. report said in one of two declassified paragraphs. "Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."

EVERY CLAIM Bush made may now go up in smoke, the next smoking gun like a mushroom cloud. The rhetoric of the run up could be satirized were it not so serious. Here is a hanging fire in the story: [emphasis mine]

At the time of his capture, Mr. Libi was the most senior Qaeda official in American custody. The D.I.A. document gave no indication of where he was being held, or what interrogation methods were used on him.

SO THE WAR BEGINS with lies, a tortured truth Americans will have to endure.  A related question may be how al-Libi’s testimony was found out to be false.  Given the urgency  the White House place on gettinng intel no matter the cost, the more cynical may ask whether al-Libi was tortured to provide it. At a point when Cheney seeks a torture exemption for the CIA and John McCain would see torture explicitly banned, what kind of “evidence” we get from torture may soon be treated quite harshly.

MORE TO FOLLOW

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
SMOKE? [The Reaction] There may not be a smoking gun, at least not yet, but there sure is a lot of smoke.

SO WHAT? [Steve Soto/The Left Coaster]  . . at the certification that Bush sent to Congress to start the war, which was required in the October 2002 war resolution, and then see that as we suspected over two and a half years ago, Bush has a big problem now . . . This latest revelation means that at the time Bush justified the commencement of war against Iraq consistent with what was required under Public Law 107-243, he certified things not in evidence, and made claims to Congress (Saddam’s active operation of a WMD program and Saddam’s assistance to Al Qaeda) that he, Cheney, and Rummy already knew were false.

THINK PROGRESS has a list of claims using dubious "evidence."

UP IN SMOKE [Maha] Libi recanted his stories in January 2004, which prompted the CIA to recall all intelligence reports based on his testimony. This fact was recorded in a footnote to the September 11 Commission report, but the original DIA report report is MIA from the 9/11 report.

THE FIX IS IN [Jack Balkin] At some point, we will no longer be able to say that the Administration's use of pre-war intelligence was mere negligence; it looks more and more like reckless disregard for the truth. In the words of the Downing Street Memo, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."