Sunday, May 17, 2009

Spinning torture

Notice that MSNBC's coverage of the story on torture seeking a confession of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is based on alleged torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is not reported to have confessed to such a link, and not on the alleged torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who is reported to have revealed such a link.



This supports the argument that what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said about 9/11 was true, while avoiding the difficult problem of the death of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, and the fact that a tortured confession was in fact offered to the United Nations as justification for the Iraq invasion.

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/13/two-experts-cast-doubt-on-ibn-al-shaykh-al-libis-suicide/

The alleged link given by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was actually used in Colin Powell's February 2003 address to the United Nations, and the alleged attempts to torture KSM to establish a link occurred after this. So why the focus on KSM, when it is the al-Libi confession that was actually used at the United Nations?

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/04/29/even-in-cheneys-bleak-world-the-al-qaeda-iraq-torture-story-is-a-new-low/

Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: the tortured lie that underpinned the Iraq war

In case anyone has forgotten, when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of the Khaldan military training camp in Afghanistan, was captured at the end of 2001 and sent to Egypt to be tortured, he made a false confession that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later recanted his confession, but not until Secretary of State Colin Powell — to his eternal shame — had used the story in February 2003 in an attempt to persuade the UN to support the invasion of Iraq.