This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051121/scheer1105

by Robert Scheer
Lying with Intelligence

[from the November 21, 2005 issue]

Who 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 this 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
Qaeda terror attack using weapons of mass destruction.

The report demolished the credibility of the key Al Qaeda informant the
Administration relied on to make its claim that a working alliance
existed between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. It was circulated
widely within the US government a full eight months before Bush used the
prisoner's lies to argue for an invasion of Iraq because "we've learned
that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and
deadly gases."

Al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi--a Libyan
captured in Pakistan in 2001--was probably "intentionally misleading the
debriefers," the DIA report concluded in one of two paragraphs finally
declassified at the request of Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and released
by his office over the weekend. 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 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 United States
that were fundamentally at odds with each other. Al Qaeda was able to
create a base in Iraq only after the US overthrow of Hussein, not
before. "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic
revolutionary movements," accurately noted the DIA.

Yet Bush used the informant's already discredited tall tale in his key
October 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, Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to sell it
to the United Nations, while Vice President ***** Cheney, national
security advisor Condoleezza Rice, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith repeated it breathlessly for
homeland audiences. The con worked, and Americans came to believe the
lie that Hussein was associated with the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Even CIA Director George Tenet publicly fell into line, ignoring his own
agency's dissent that Libi would not have been in a position to know
what he said he knew. In fact, 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.

One by one, the exotic intelligence factoids Bush's researchers culled
from raw intelligence data files to publicly bolster their claim of
imminent threat--the yellowcake uranium from Niger, the aluminum tubes
for processing uranium, the Prague meeting with Mohamed Atta, the
discredited Iraqi informants "Curveball" and Ahmad Chalabi--have been
exposed as previously known frauds.

When it came to selling an invasion of Iraq it had wanted to launch
before 9/11, the Bush White House systematically ignored the best
available intelligence from US agencies or any other reliable source.

It should be remembered that while Bush and his gang were successfully
scaring the wits out of us about the alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda alliance, UN
weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq. Weapons inspectors Hans
Blix and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei promised they
could finish scouring the country if given a few more months. But
instead, they were abruptly chased out by an invasion necessitated by
what the President told us was a "unique and urgent threat."

Bush exploited the worldwide horror felt over the 9/11 attacks to
justify the Iraq invasion. His outrageous claim, repeated over and over
before and after he dragged the nation into an unnecessary war, was
never supported by a single piece of credible evidence. The Bush defense
of what is arguably the biggest lie ever put over on the American people
is that everyone had gotten the intelligence wrong. Not so at the
highest level of US intelligence, as DITSUM No. 044-02 so clearly shows.
How could the President not have known?