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From the NY Times of 9 Dec 2005:

Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim
The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

Clearly the above must be all lies. First, it is contrary to what religous Christian extremists have been telling us. Torture does not produce lies - even though tortured enemies in Guantanamo provide unreliable information. Even though we contract others to do it - rendition. Even though we are not secretly kidnapping people in other nations. Even though numerous people once held in Guantanamo for years are being quietly released back to freedom in their own countries - because they were never terrorists.

The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

The fact that Mr. Libi recanted after the American invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the C.I.A. in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But American officials had not previously acknowledged either that Mr. Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Mr. Libi contended that his statements had been coerced. ...

The [CIA] currently holds between two and three dozen high-ranking terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world.

But these prisons never exists. A righteous Christian tells us so. The president wouldn't lie.

Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases." ...

The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. ...

The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.

Just waiting for George Jr to claim that he also reads his PDBs. After all, what is one more white lie. The nuns told me that lying was a mortal sin. Clearly the nuns were wrong. George Jr is god's chosen one. George Jr would never commit a mortal sin.