From an AFP
story reporting on a soon-to-be released BBC report:
An Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the United States, who gave evidence of links between
Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being tortured, a journalist told the BBC.
Quite aside from the human rights implications, we know that one of the chief reasons to NOT use torture is that the information obtained is unreliable. A person being tortured will say anything at all to stop the pain.
Worse than unreliable information, though, is a person being tortured into giving a false confession that bolsters the biases of the torturers. Remember what Richard Clarke had to say about Bush's post-9/11 agenda? From a Washington Post article on "Against All Enemies":
Spotting Richard A. Clarke, his counterterrorism coordinator, Bush pulled him and a small group of aides into the dark paneled room.
"Go back over everything, everything," Bush said, according to Clarke's account. "See if Saddam did this."
"But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this," Clarke replied.
"I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred."
Now we learn that the Bush regime did "find" the link they wanted. From the AFP story:
[al Qaeda suspect Iban al Shakh al]Libby was tortured in an Egyptian prison, according to Stephen Grey, the author of the newly-released book "Ghost Plane" who investigated the secret US
Central Intelligence Agency prisons that housed terror suspects around the world.
...
"What he claimed most significantly was a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state)
Colin Powell as a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq," [Grey told the BBC]
al Libby has since been "disappeared".
Update: corrected "AP" to "AFP" as the source of the story, as per Shpilk's comment below.
Update #2: The link to Ghost Plane: Inside the CIA's Secret Prisons Program by Stephen Grey
http://www.ghostplane.net/