Dick Cheney

Cheney Still Pushing Bogus Saddam-Al Qaeda Link

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 1:10PM

Here's something else that's noteworthy from Cheney's speech. He again falsely implied that Saddam was working with al Qaeda:

We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.

It's unclear which "Mideast terrorists" those were. After all, Saddam had for over 30 years been the leader of a major Mideast country. It would be surprising if you couldn't find that he had "ties" to terrorists of some kind. But Cheney's purpose in bringing it up is clearly to suggest that Saddam had meaningful connections to the terrorists who hit us on 9/11. That's long been known to be a lie.

Iraq

Detainee Said He Was Brought To Gitmo To Give Info On Iraqi Army

Zachary Roth | May 18, 2009, 3:40PM

More possible evidence that the Bush administration used torture to get information about Iraq?

Back in 2004, the Associated Press reported on the plight of several Guantanamo detainees who had previously been held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Among them was one Iraqi:

The Iraqi, Arkan Mohammed Ghafil al Karim, says he deserted from Saddam Hussein's army and was later imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban for two years. He says he was brought to Guantanamo in 2002 so that the American military could learn about Iraq's army ahead of the invasion of that country.

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Torture

Zubaydah, Waterboarded Multiple Times, Was Pressured To Reveal Saddam-Qaeda Ties

Zachary Roth | May 15, 2009, 4:38PM

Here's another possible piece of evidence that the Bush torture program was used to bolster the political case for the Iraq war.

That 2004 intelligence committee report on Iraq intel that we just wrote about also contains a short section, on page 324, on the information provided by Abu Zubaydah:

The CIA provided four reports detailing the debriefings of Abu Zubaydah, a captured senior coordinator for Al Qaida responsible for training and recruiting. Abu Zubaydah said he was not aware of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaida. He also said, however, that any relationship would be highly compartmented and went on to name al Qaida members who he thought had good contacts with Iraqis. For instance, Abu Zubaydah indicated that he had heard that an important al Qaeda associate, Abu Mus'ab al -Zarqawi, and others had good relationships with Iraqi intelligence ... REDACTED ... During the debrefings, Abu Zubaydah offered his opinion that it would be extremely unlikely for Bin Laden to have agreed to ally with Iraq, due to his desire to keep organization on track with its mission and maintain its operational independence.

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Torture

Report: Questions On Qaeda-Saddam Ties Were "Among The First Presented" To KSM

Zachary Roth | May 15, 2009, 3:47PM

A great find by the Huffington Post offers additional evidence that the Bushies used torture to try to Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda :

A line buried on page 353 of the July 2004 Select Committee on Intelligence report on pre-Iraq war intelligence reads:

CTC [Counter Terrorist Center] noted that the questions regarding al-Qaida's ties to the Iraqi regime were among the first presented to senior al-Qaida operational planner Khalid Shaikh Muhammad following his capture.

"Among the first presented".

Yesterday we rounded up the other evidence that torture was used to bolster the political case for war with Iraq.

Torture

Focus Shifting To Evidence Bushies Ordered Torture To Boost Case For Iraq War

Zachary Roth | May 14, 2009, 6:21PM

At last, the torture debate looks to be heading toward what's been the big question lurking in the background all along: was the Bush administration using torture in large part to make a political case for the invasion of Iraq?

Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.

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Nancy Pelosi

Is Pelosi Tying Torture Program To Push For Iraq War?

Zachary Roth | May 14, 2009, 12:19PM

Here's a very interesting line from the statement Nancy Pelosi just gave:

We also now know that techniques, including waterboarding, had already been employed, and that those briefing me in September 2002 gave me inaccurate and incomplete information.

At the same time, the Bush Administration was misleading the American people about the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (our itals)

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Defense Department

Lawmaker On Withdrawn IG Report: "The American People Have Been Misled"

Zachary Roth | May 6, 2009, 5:03PM

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) led the congressional charge against the Pentagon's use of retired military analysts to shill for the Iraq war on TV -- a program that was exposed in that Pulitzer-winning New York Times report.

Now the Pentagon Inspector General's office has withdrawn a report into the affair, which had largely exonerated the department, finding that it "did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product." And DeLauro isn't mincing words about the news.

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