From Josh Marshall (Nov. 05, 2005 — 06:19 PM EST)

Bill Kristol, 11/14/2005: “After all, the bipartisan Silberman-Robb commission found no evidence of political manufacture and manipulation of intelligence.”
Silberman-Robb Commission Report, 3/31/05: “[W]e were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community.
Accordingly, while we interviewed a host of current and former policymakers during the course of our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the Intelligence Community reached and communicated its judgments about Iraq’s weapons programs–not to review how policymakers subsequently used that information.”

Here is how “policymakers” used it. The CIA’s truth was kept “classified”, the policymaker’s contradiction “was unclassified”.
From the NYT

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: November 6, 2005
Mr. Powell relied heavily on accounts provided by Mr. Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing “the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda.’’
At the time of Mr. Powell’s speech, an unclassified statement by the C.I.A. described the reporting, now known to have been from Mr. Libi, as “credible.’’ But Mr. Levin said he had learned that a classified C.I.A. assessment at the time stated “the source was not in a position to know if any training had taken place.’’
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Levin also called attention to a portion of the D.I.A. report that expressed skepticism about the idea of close collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, an idea that was never substantiated by American intelligence but was a pillar of the administration’s prewar claims.

Oh yeah. And they made up shit.

Posted by: Hamburger | Nov 6 2005 13:42 utc | 4

“The UN has confirmed that not enough tents currently exist in the entire world to accommodate the 3 million homeless in northern Pakistan.”
http://tinyurl.com/bqqhp

Posted by: BQQHP#45 | Nov 6 2005 18:33 utc | 6

al libi was tortured

Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was America’s first big trophy in the war on terror: a senior Qaeda operative captured amid the fighting in Afghanistan. What is less known is that al-Libi, who ran Qaeda training camps, quickly became the subject of a bitter feud between the FBI and the CIA over how to interrogate terror suspects.
Al-Libi’s capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government’s internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi’s interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency’s hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. “They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo” for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. “At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, ‘You’re going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I’m going to find your mother and I’m going to f— her.’ So we lost that fight.” (A CIA official said he had no comment.)

Posted by: annie | Nov 6 2005 19:44 utc | 8

hmm

Speaking from the Senate floor, Mr. McCain said, “If necessary – and I sincerely hope it is not – I and the co-sponsors of this amendment will seek to add it to every piece of important legislation voted on in the Senate until the will of a substantial bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress prevails,” Mr. McCain said on the Senate floor. “Let no one doubt our determination.”
The ban would establish the Army Field Manual as the guiding authority in interrogations and prohibit “cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment” of prisoners.
Vice President Dick Cheney made a rare personal appeal for Congress to allow the CIA exemption during a weekly meeting with Republican senators earlier this week.
Mr. Cheney told his audience the while the United States doesn’t engage in torture, the administration needs an exemption in case the President decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.

Posted by: annie | Nov 6 2005 20:24 utc | 10