On Friday, McClatchy provided a big new addition — which hasn’t got the attention it deserves — to the growing pile of evidence suggesting the Bush administration used torture to build a political case for the Iraq war.
The news service dug up comments made in 2004 by Dick Cheney to the-now defunct Rocky Mountain News. Said the then-veep:
The (al Qaida-Iraq) links go back. We know for example from interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who wants to look at it.”
And McClatchy spoke to a top Guantanamo investigator, retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, who said:
I’m aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side. That was something they were tasked to look at.
Of course, no evidence of any operational links between al Qaeda and Iraq has been found. But we’re finding plenty of evidence that the Bushies used torture to try to find such evidence.