Newly Discovered Document Echoes Previous DIA Documents
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2005, 2:21pm PT  

Isikoff and Hosenball are reporting in NEWSWEEK today that the CIA had raised doubts about the information that the Bush Administration (and indeed Bush, himself) relied on to sell the War on Iraq to the American People and to Congress.

The newly uncovered CIA document seems to echo a DIA document previously released that similarly expressed doubts about the information received from Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi who recanted his claims that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members. That, however, didn't keep the Bush Administration from using the bad intelligence anway...

A CIA document shows the agency in January 2003 raised questions about an Al Qaeda detainee's claims that Saddam Hussein's government provided chemical and biological weapons training to terrorists—weeks before President George W. Bush and other top officials flatly used those same claims to make their case for war against Iraq.

Lots of meat in the piece, but the following graf speaks to those wingnuts who still enjoy describing Harry Reid's invokation of Senate Rule 21 last week as "a stunt" after two years have passed without Sen. Pat Robert's (R-KA) promised investigation into the Administration's use and/or mis-use of prewar intel matters [emphasis added]:

For their part, [Sen. Carl] Levin [(D-MI)] and Sen. Jay Rockefeller [(D-WV)] want the Senate Intelligence Committee, as part of its reinvigorated Phase II investigation into the handling of Iraq pre-war intelligence, to answer key questions about al-Libi: What happened to the February 2002 DIA report questioning al-Libi's credibility? Were the CIA's caveats circulated to the White House before President Bush made his assertions? And why did the intelligence community declassify the substance of al-Libi's original claims so they could be used in Powell's speech in February 2003—but fail to publicly acknowledge that he had recanted until NEWSWEEK reported on it more than a year later?

They all sound like good questions to us and about which the American People and Congress deserve answers...as the wars...all of them...rage on.

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