http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/news/opinion/13156507.htmWho in the White House knew about DITSUM No. 044-02, and when did they know it? That's the newly declassified smoking-gun document, originally prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2002 but ignored by President Bush. Its declassification last weekend blows another huge hole in Bush's claim that he was acting on the best intelligence available when he pitched the invasion of Iraq as a way to prevent an al-Qaida terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction. The report demolished the credibility of the key al-Qaida informant the administration relied on to make its claim that a working alliance existed between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Al-Qaida senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi - a Libyan captured in Pakistan in 2001 - probably was "intentionally misleading the debriefers," the DIA report concluded in one of two paragraphs finally declassified at the request of Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. The report also said: "Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."
He got that right. Folks in the highest places were very interested in claims along the lines al-Libi was peddling, even though they went against both logic and the preponderance of intelligence gathered to that point about possible collaboration between two enemies of the U.S. that were fundamentally at odds with each other. Al-Qaida was able to create a base in Iraq only after the U.S. overthrow of Saddam, not before.
Yet Bush used the informant's already discredited tall tale in his key Oct. 7, 2002, speech just before the Senate voted on whether to authorize the use of force in Iraq and again in two speeches in February, just ahead of the invasion. Leading up to the war, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to sell it to the United Nations, while Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith repeated it for homeland audiences. The con worked, and Americans came to believe the lie that Saddam was associated with the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers.
In fact, al-Libi, according to the DIA, could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training allegedly occurred. In January 2004, the prisoner recanted his story, and the next month the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his false information.
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