Al Libi testimony coerced, but where?

This is really interesting when compared to previous reporting.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - 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.....

There's a previous report by Jehl on al Libi(Nov. 6 - NYTimes) which refers to a declassified DIA document that Sen. Carl Levin released. It refers to al Libi as a "likely fabbricator." It makes the point that Bush, Cheney, and Powell, as well as other administration officials repeatedly cited Libi's information, that Iraq trained Al Qaeda in chemical weapons, as "credible." This was the source Bush cited as truth in his infamous Oct. 7, 2002 Cincinnati speech. Here's the pertinent paragraph. (If you want to take a trip in the wayback machine to see just how forcefully they were making these bad claims, read, listen to, or watch this speech. I counted the word "nuclear" twenty times in this speech.)

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Now, let's take a look at the claims regarding al-Libi provided by the CIA to ABCNews on Nov. 18th of this year.

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

All three of these reports show the same thing, that al Libi was a known fabricator that the Bush Whitehouse cited as "credible", but the interesting thing to me is that the CIA version(last excerpt) leaves out the untidy fact that al Libi was shipped to Egypt. So, did he crack after two weeks of "harsh interrogation" tactics in US custody as the CIA claims, or was that a cover and he was really broken by the Egyptians? Or did they just ship this guy around shopping torture regimens until he finally broke and started spouting nonsense?

And if that's the case, should we have gone to war based on that?

(So, I went ahead and listened to that Cincinnati speech again while I was folding laundry and such, and it contains every bad bit of intelligence there was besides the famous 16 words which were stricken from this speech by the CIA. All the greatest hits are there. Atta in Prague, aluminum tubes, UAV's, mobile Bio labs, connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda, smoking gun as a mushroom cloud, that inspectors were thrown out, not pulled out, all of them. I really recommend you take a read, listen, watch of this speech to really remember the brazenness of the lies. It's 29 minutes and unfortunately not MP3, so no ipod.)