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lily
05-29-2007, 10:05 PM
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924256/site/newsweek/


The Missing Terrorist
The Bush administration once proudly trumpeted its capture of terrorist
leader Ibn al-Shakyh al-Libi—a key source for the assertion that Iraq helped
train Al Qaeda in biochem weapons. His story has since been discredited.
Where is he now?



Web exclusive
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 3:22 p.m. ET May 29, 2007
May 29, 2007 - A group of House members is pressing the White House to
provide answers for the first time to one of the biggest mysteries of the
debate over pre-Iraq War intelligence: what really happened to captured
terrorist leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi—once considered one of the U.S.
military’s most prized catches in the war on terror?



Al-Libi, who ran one of Al Qaeda’s biggest training camps, was the principle
source for former secretary of State Colin Powell’s claim to the U.N.
Security Council that Saddam Hussein’s regime had helped train Al Qaeda in
chemical and biological weapons. But as first reported by NEWSWEEK three
years ago, al-Libi later recanted his story about Iraqi weapons training,
forcing the CIA to withdraw all its reporting based on his assertions.

A newly updated edition of the book, “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin,
Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War”—co-written by the author of this
article and David Corn and published this week in paperback—quotes from
declassified CIA operational cables that suggest that al-Libi had been
brutally tortured by the Egyptian intelligence service and coerced into
making his claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction training for Al
Qaeda.

The cables indicate that al-Libi told agency debriefers in February 2004
that he “fabricated” his story about the weapons training only after his
Egyptian interrogators crammed him into a tiny box for 17 hours. His account
appears to be the first public description of a controversial “aggressive”
interrogation technique called a “mock burial,” in which interrogators make
their subjects believe they are being buried alive in a bid to elicit
information.

In a May 24 letter to President Bush, the House members pushed for answers.
“We are deeply concerned that an important facet of your administration’s
case that Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States, which has
been demonstrated as false, rested upon information extracted through
torture by a foreign intelligence service,” wrote Democratic Reps. Ed Markey
and William Delahunt of Massachusetts and Jerrold Nadler of New York. Markey
is sponsor of a bill to halt the CIA’s practice of “rendering” suspects to
foreign countries for interrogation; Delahunt is chairman of a House Foreign
Affairs Oversight subcommittee that is investigating the rendition issue.


Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said today
that the White House had just received the letter and will review it.
“Prewar intelligence has already been exhaustively reviewed by the Congress,
as well as an independent commission, that led to a restructuring of the
intelligence community,” he added.


The three House members, noting that it is a violation of U.S. and
international law to transfer anyone to a country where there are
“substantial grounds” to believe the person might be tortured, asked Bush
whether CIA personnel participated in the interrogation of al-Libi. They
also asked whether the administration ever took any steps to determine if
the torture allegations were in fact true. (While declining to discuss any
specifics about al-Libi’s case, a CIA spokesman said that as a general
matter,”the CIA does not conduct or condone torture, and does not transport
individuals to other countries for the purpose of torture.”)

The House members also want Bush to provide Congress with information about
al-Libi’s current whereabouts—a prime subject of interest to human-rights
groups and others who suspect that the administration is concealing key
information about him because of the potential political and legal
ramifications. “Where is al-Libi today?” the letter asks.

Other captured Al Qaeda operatives have claimed to be torture victims. But
few accounts have been as detailed—and hold the potential for more
embarrassment—than the one provided by al-Libi. When al-Libi was first
captured in January 2002, Pentagon officials described him as the “emir” of
the notorious Khalden paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan; White House
officials indicated at the time that al-Libi was on their list of “top 12”
suspected Al Qaeda leaders targeted for apprehension.

But administration references to al-Libi all but vanished after the NEWSWEEK
disclosure in 2004 about his pivotal role in the shaping of intelligence on
purported Iraq-Al Qaeda ties in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. As later
findings by the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed, the account
extracted from al-Libi was used by President Bush as the prime basis for a
key assertion in his Oct. 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati about the threat
posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al
Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases,” Bush said in the
speech, just days before Congress voted on the White House-requested
resolution authorizing the president to go to war against Iraq.

glockmail
05-30-2007, 06:16 AM
Who cares what we did with him?

Dilloduck
05-30-2007, 07:05 AM
Who cares what we did with him?

Bushs' opponents--they are still looking for evidence that they can use to impeach him.

Nukeman
05-30-2007, 07:07 AM
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924256/site/newsweek/
Let me get this straight, you are concerned as to whether or not the US government used force to extract information from a known terrorist yet you remain silent about the "how to book" by Al' quida. You have a warped sense of what is important and where you place your loyalty.

It sickens me that we have liberals here in the US who are more concerned about these types of people and yet turn a blind eye when one of our citizens is beheaded, tortured and mutilated on international TV.

You and your kind are disgusting!!!!!!

Dilloduck
05-30-2007, 07:17 AM
Let me get this straight, you are concerned as to whether or not the US government used force to extract information from a known terrorist yet you remain silent about the "how to book" by Al' quida. You have a worped since of what is important and where you place your loyalty.

It sickens me that we have liberals her in the US who are more concerned about these types of people and yet turn a blind eye when one of our citizens is beheaded, tortured and mutilated on international TV.

You and your kind are disgusting!!!!!!

You got it. It's all about payback. They have never gotten over Clintons' impeachment and Bushs' presidential victory. Nothing else matters.
They were worried for awhile there because Bush was going to look good for finally stepping up and engaging bin ladens cult militarily but have since found a way to make every bad thing that happens in the world his fault.

glockmail
05-30-2007, 08:39 AM
Let me get this straight, you are concerned as to whether or not the US government used force to extract information from a known terrorist yet you remain silent about the "how to book" by Al' quida. You have a worped since of what is important and where you place your loyalty.

It sickens me that we have liberals her in the US who are more concerned about these types of people and yet turn a blind eye when one of our citizens is beheaded, tortured and mutilated on international TV.

You and your kind are disgusting!!!!!!

That's not quite fair. I haven't seen evidence that Lily is more concerned about terrorists. Turns a blind eye, maybe. What say you, Lil?

lily
05-30-2007, 10:07 AM
That's not quite fair. I haven't seen evidence that Lily is more concerned about terrorists. Turns a blind eye, maybe. What say you, Lil?

Glock, what I am concerned about is that they tortured this man, he gave false information and then we turned around and used that false information (again) to get the American public all riled up to go to war. Hell, at least with Chalabi when he told us lies that we wanted to hear, we rewarded him with money and power.

I want the congress that I voted for to get down to business and stop fooling around with talk of impeachment, coddling Bush and giving him what he wants, the Gonzales investigation (come on, it's over. The fat lady sang, step down already) and all the other nonsense and do the job I voted for. Find out how we got into this mess, so the same mistakes can't happen again and do something about it. Get us out of it, instead of just biding your time and picking up your paycheck.

lily
05-30-2007, 10:11 AM
Bushs' opponents--they are still looking for evidence that they can use to impeach him.

Dill if that was aimed at me, then the accusation is baseless. I've stated many times how I feel about impeachment. This is about getting to the truth. At the risk of (again) being called a Bush basher.....he has laid the blame from the begining on everyone else but himself and has gotten the result that now no one believes anything they hear from both this country and the agencies he has put the blame onto. If this vindicates just one of those agencies and shows that he either didn't care that the information was false and they get some of their credibility back, then so be it.


You got it. It's all about payback. They have never gotten over Clintons' impeachment and Bushs' presidential victory. Nothing else matters.

Wow.......you guessed my inner most desire! I sat up nights wishing something like this would come out. This is not aimed at you but the right in general......the man lied about getting a blow job, get over it. If that's all you got, then I feel sorry for you. When you use that, it makes it seem that you're wishing that's all Bush did wrong.


They were worried for awhile there because Bush was going to look good for finally stepping up and engaging bin ladens cult militarily but have since found a way to make every bad thing that happens in the world his fault.

Dill......timing is everything and talk is cheap. The bill was coming up. This time Bush didn't use the strategy of getting in front of every camera available and puffing his chest saying I'm going to veto this. Instead he went back to his tried and true method of scaring the American people. If he was so concerned about bin-Laden we would have found the tallest man in Afghanistan by now......now before you say he is in Pakistan and we can't go there......not allowing our soldiers to go into Pakistan is a recent development........it didn't stop us a year ago. As Bush's own words have said...he's not that important........odd al-Sadr wasn't that important when we had him in Najaf either.

You seem to want to blame the media and the liberals for things that Bush has done wrong. Sorry, the media only reports, the liberals only speak and Bush is the one that is fucking this country up......so where should the blame go? Well, on everyone else, just like Bush does.


.........but now I've gone and went off topic.

lily
05-30-2007, 10:14 AM
Let me get this straight, you are concerned as to whether or not the US government used force to extract information from a known terrorist yet you remain silent about the "how to book" by Al' quida. You have a warped sense of what is important and where you place your loyalty.

It sickens me that we have liberals here in the US who are more concerned about these types of people and yet turn a blind eye when one of our citizens is beheaded, tortured and mutilated on international TV.

You and your kind are disgusting!!!!!!

No.......but don't let that stop you from throwing false accusations.

glockmail
05-30-2007, 02:59 PM
Glock, what I am concerned about is that they tortured this man, he gave false information and then we turned around and used that false information (again) to get the American public all riled up to go to war. .....

First of all waterboarding is not torture. Look at the picture of what's left of our guys after the terrorists had their way: that's torture.

Second if we did get information from waterboarding, putting panties on guys heads or showing them pictures of nude girls then that information should be treated as any other should be: collaborate it with other evidence.

theHawk
05-30-2007, 04:15 PM
Torture does work, it just doesn't work on everybody. We should not limit ourselves when it comes to national security. However, I would like to know as well if this one man's testamony, false or otherwise, had a such a huge impact as is being claimed here. I have my doubts.
That being said, this man was an al Qaeda terrorist, and I won't lose any sleep if he is never found and is buried somewhere drenched in pig's blood.