A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

An al-Qaeda captive deliberately misled the U.S. into attacking Iraq, an ex-spy is claiming. Under the assumed name Omar Nasiri, the former double agent detailed last night on a BBC program and in a new book his infiltration of terrorist organizations over a decade and what he learned about their strategies.

It is already known [1] that Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who ran al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, provided erroneous information after he was captured by American forces in late 2001 and sent to Egypt for interrogation and torture. Nasiri adds to the story with his contention that Libi intentionally lied to provoke the U.S. to invade Iraq in hopes of overthrowing Saddam and establishing Iraq as the center of a massive jihad.

Of course, the western intelligence organizations Nasiri claims to have worked for are obviously not commenting on their ties to him. But his credibility has been addressed positively by multiple media outlets covering his book and the interview, such as the Washington Post [2], the New York Times [3], CBS [4], the UK Guardian [5], and the BBC [6]. "I’ve never seen anything from that period that was so complete and rang so true," said Michael Scheuer, who used to run the CIA unit that focused on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. "It really tied together and resonated with the information we had in classified form."

True or not, Nasiri's story is certainly very plausible and consistent with everything else we have heard about pre-war intelligence: the Bush Administration blindly accepted anything that justified war, regardless of veracity. It also reaffirms arguments against torture: in addition to being barbaric, uncivilized, and a danger to our own troops, torture also can provide wrong information. "(Libi) knew what his interrogators wanted, and he was happy to give it to them," Nasiri wrote. "He wanted to see Saddam toppled even more than the Americans did."

According to Nasiri, one of the most important parts of the training al-Qaeda recruits receive in training camps is how to supply false information during interrogation.

If anything Nasiri alleges is accurate, it would indicate a systematic failure of the Bush Administration to collect and interpret intelligence, and further debase their case for war. Kinda makes you wonder why Americans are not hearing anything about this in the news, doesn't it?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

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