Bush Administration Wanted To Link Iraq, Al-Qaeda
 Wednesday, May 20th, 2009  by Connie T.

On the Rachel Maddow show on Friday, Maddow revealed some new developments in the controversy of harsh interrogation techniques/torture sanctioned by the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney administration.

Six years ago, many of were struggling to understand the link between a threat of terrorism from Al-Qaeda, and the war in Iraq. Turns out, so were administration officials. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or KSM, who was captured by US officials and waterboarded 183 times, was primarily asked about a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq, it's been revealed.

An Army psychiatrist has testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that a large part of the time they were focused on trying to "establish a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq," which was not successful but produced more pressure and harsher measures.

The legal justification for utilizing these interrogation techniques was to prevent another imminent attack; yet they took place after the fall of Saddam Hussein and without any link between terrorist attacks on the US (past or impending).

Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during Colin Powell's term, said last week, "The Administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 - well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion - [and] its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida."

No such smoking gun was found. No weapons of mass destruction, as we know, were found. Purportedly Al-Qaeda initiated the attacks of September 11th against us, theretofore we instead invaded Iraq, desperately seeking a way to fabricate a link between the two, resorting to torturing Iraqi prisoners of war to this end?

While the mainstream media is focusing instead on Nancy Pelosi and whether or not Congress was mislead, instead of starting at the top of the pyramid and assigning accountability, we wonder if Dick Cheney will ever be plucked from his multimillion dollar estate and made to testify before the American people (in a venue other than FOX News), and held responsible for the actions of his administration.

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