Ray McGovern: How Torture Trapped Colin Powell

How Torture Trapped Colin Powell

By Ray McGovern
May 18, 2009

Four days before trying to sell the invasion of Iraq to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell was ready to scrap dubious allegations about Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda but was dissuaded by top CIA officials who cited a new “bombshell” that now appears to have been derived from torture, a top Powell aide says.

Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was then Powell’s chief of staff, said the key moment occurred on Feb. 1, 2003, as the two men labored at the CIA over Powell’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council set for Feb. 5.

“Powell and I had a one-on-one — no one else even in the room — about his angst over what was a rather dull recounting of several old stories about Al Qa’ida-Baghdad ties ,” Wilkerson said. “I agreed with him that what we had was bull___t, and Powell decided to eliminate all mention of terrorist contacts between AQ and Baghdad.

“Within an hour, Tenet and McLaughlin dropped a bombshell on the table in the director’s Conference Room: a high-level AQ detainee had just revealed under interrogation substantive contacts between AQ and Baghdad, including Iraqis training AQ operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons.”

Though Tenet and McLaughlin wouldn’t give Powell the identity of the al-Qaeda source, Wilkerson said he now understands that it was Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda operative who later claimed he gave the CIA false information in the face of actual and threatened torture.

<snip>

The al-Libi case might help you understand why, even though information from torture is notoriously unreliable, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the sycophants running U.S. intelligence ordered it anyway.

<more>

http://consortiumnews.com/2009/051809a.html
*

Well, that's it. We got 'em.

Deliberately lied into a war of aggression. Big time war crime. All the Bushistas guilty. Start the trials...

No?

Let's stop & chatter about other stuff first.

That's the ticket.

That sounds essential to maintain our bare grip on a semblance of civilization.

Let's let the war criminals go.

In fact, let's gin up another war.

On & on & on...

about the torture? :sarcasm: Isn't she the only one that should be incarcerated because she didn't tell? :sarcasm:

It should be easy to clear that up & then we can get on with the war criminals.

That is why he insisted Tenet sit right behind him. Think of the lives he might have saved if he had done what he knew was right. Powell might have saved war if he had spoken out and resigned. I have no sympathy for him, but I totally admire Wilkerson.