Bush knew it was bullshit -- and went to war anyway

In a sane world, this would be explosive news:

A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said 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.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. 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 8Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’’

The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

[snip]

Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.

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.

This completely eviscerates the Administration's claim that the Senate had access to the same intelligence that they did. It should come as no surprise that the Administration cherry-picked intelligence, and would have given credence to any nutjob who came along who told them what they wanted to hear, because the war in Iraq was a foregone conclusion from the day Bush took office.

Now is the time for all the Democrats in the Senate who voted for this war (Mrs. Clinton, I'm talking to YOU) based on the selective intelligence they were given to start screaming bloody murder that they were duped. There's no shame in wanting to trust the President to give you accurate information. But when you've been duped, it's time to step up to the plate and start administering some serious whup-ass to those who have duped you.

Over 2000 American kids are dead in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden is still out there, because PNAC wanted a war, and Bush, with his own psychosexual issues about his father, provided the perfect useful idiot to help them advance their plans. As a result, we are trapped in an intractable war without end, tens of thousands of young Americans are maimed for life, and God only knows how many Iraqi civilians we've killed in pursuit of this maniacal lust for empire.

It is time to hold this Administration accountable for its crimes against humanity.