Torture helped build Iraq war case

According to Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell:

"what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--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."

Get this, the 'supreme' international crime was aided by torture:

"So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop."

Wilkerson also implies that there is some connection between al-Libi's recent death and the fact that "Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi..." Others also wonder why "not a single mainstream US newspaper or broadcast outlet has reported on the story", usually a dead giveaway.

CNN reports that counterterrorism adviser for the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch Stacy Sullivan "called al-Libi's allegation "pivotal" to the Bush administration's case for war, as it connected Baghdad to the terrorist organization behind the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington."

Wilkerson writes "There in fact were no such contacts."

Let's remember here , as Gordon Prather points out the context, that "Bush-Cheney and Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz had already developed plans to invade and occupy Iraq, months before the Saudi terrorists attacked the Pentagon and brought down the World Trade Center Twin Towers."