An Interview with Michael Isikoff (KEVIN ZEESE)

[laststeamtrain]

An Interview with Michael Isikoff
Iraq: "At a Minimum Negligence in the Commission of a Fraud"

By KEVIN ZEESE

<snip>

Michael Isikoff: I really think the facts speak for themselves at this point. It is unquestionably true that the Bush administration took the country to war on what has turned out to be thoroughly false, and in some cases, fraudulent intelligence. What we do in Hubris is show precisely how that happened and demonstrate, rather conclusively I think, that there were ample grounds to doubt many of the most dramatic claims-that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program, for example, or had ties to Al Qaeda. In civil cases, somebody can be successfully sued not just for knowing they sell you a false bill of goods; but if they "should have known." That's, at a minimum, what happened here-- negligence in the commission of a fraud.

<snip>

MI: There are tons to investigate. The question is how much willpower there will be in Congress to do so. If I were to make recommendations, I would tell them to start by reading the shocking story about Ibn Shaiykh al-Libi in Chapter 7 of our book. He was the alleged Al Qaeda guy who made up the story about Osama bin Laden sending operatives to Iraq for training in chemical and biological weapons because the CIA "rendered " him to Egypt for brutal interrogations by the Egyptian security services. Al-Libi's bogus, torture-induced story was repeated at great length by Secretary of State Powell at the Security Council. Yet after the war, when al-Libi was returned to U.S. custody, he recanted the whole thing, saying he only told his interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear. Al-Libi has since disappeared. There have been some media reports that he has been rendered back to his native Libya, but the U.S. government will not say one word about what happened to him or the circumstances of his interrogations that produced his false claims. If I were conducting an oversight hearing, I would start with the al-Libi story because it merges two huge areas that need scrutiny: the use of intelligence in the run-up to war and the treatment of high value detainees in what may turn out to be clear violations of the Geneva Conventions.

<more>

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese11212006.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. This guy was a 'ho for Kenneth Starr. I just thought I'd note that. nt