Carl Levin, quite dramatically,
says that he has in his position some DIA document copies showing that Bush knew his "source" for most of the Iraqi chemical and/ or bio weapons claims were bunk before several speeckes. Old news, sorry, will delete if so. Seems like pretty big news though so shouldn't this be more noticed?
Newly declassified portions of a document from the Defense Intelligence Agency showed that the administration was alerted that an al-Qaida member in U.S. custody probably was lying about links between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
The document from February 2002 showed that the agency questioned the reliability of al-Qaida senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. He could not name any Iraqis involved in the effort or identify any chemical or biological materials or cite where the training was taking place, the report said.
The DIA concluded that al-Libi probably was deliberately misleading the interrogators, and he recanted the statements in January 2004, according to the document made public by Sen. Carl Levin, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"In other words, he's an entirely unreliable individual upon whom the White House was placing substantial intelligence trust," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a member of the Intelligence Committee.
Levin said in a statement that the declassified DIA material _ which he had requested from the agency _ indicates that the administration's use of prewar intelligence was misleading and deceptive.
Levin said President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and intelligence and diplomatic officials cited, months after the information from the defense agency in February 2002, chemical and biological training by Iraq as they gathered support for the war.
"This newly declassified information provides additional, dramatic evidence that the administrations prewar statements were deceptive," Levin said. "More than a year before Secretary Powell included that charge in his presentation to the United Nations, the DIA had said it believed the detainee's claims were bogus."