CNN: Powell aide says torture helped build Iraq war case

[LSK]

(CNN) -- Finding a "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002, a former State Department official told CNN on Thursday.

The allegation was included in an online broadside aimed at former Vice President Dick Cheney by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.

"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said his accusation is based on information from current and former officials. He said he has been "relentlessly digging" since 2004, when Powell asked him to look into the scandal surrounding the treatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

more...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/14/iraq.torture/index.html

[masuki bance]

1. Did they get someone to make that link?

[Captain Hilts]

3. No, that's why the headline is deceiving. nt

[Captain Hilts]

2. CNN's headline is deceiving - it should read "attempted to build a case..." nt

[LSK]

4. true, there was no case for war n/t

[polichick]

5. This is the guy who should be interviewed all over TV - and Karpinski too.

[LSK]

6. he was on Rachel's show a few days ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaMUO17ZiSI

[polichick]

7. Yeah, but nowhere else - I love Rachel because she covers REAL news.