Revisionist History

For conservatives who are now playing revisionist history in the comments of my Quote(s) of the Day post.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," Bush said after a Cabinet meeting. As evidence, he cited Iraqi intelligence officers' meeting with bin Laden in Sudan. "There's numerous contacts between the two," Bush said.

I wouldn't be surprised if this meeting took place. The problem is no one can confirm it. The Sudan meeting story came from intelligence from the Office of Special Plans. Former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith ran that group in the Pentagon. In a rare move, the Department of Defense shot down Feith's statements to Senate. Tommy Franks called him, ""the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Who knows if the meeting took place. Bush sttod by all this bogus intelliigence.

The Bush administration has said the terrorist network and Iraq were linked.

In response, a senior administration official traveling with President Bush in Tampa, Florida, said, "We stand by what Powell and Tenet have said," referring to previous statements by Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet that described such links.

The White House played on the public's fear of 9-11 to invade all for the benefit of pro-Israel neoconservatives. The Iraq war hasn't made America or Israel safer.

The White House also presented bogus intellignce that Iraq was training al-Qaeda to use WMDs. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was tagged as a known liar by the intelligence community. The White House passed his BS as fact. al-Libi was saying these things because he was tortured.

Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi's interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency's hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight." (A CIA official said he had no comment.)

Apple sauce.