NYT: The Iraq Intelligence was maniplated?

It may not be July, but it doesn't mean it isn't time a bit of Fireworks from the New York Times:

Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document

Ever since the Democrats briefly closed the U.S. Senate from view earlier this week, to protest alleged Republican foot-dragging in probing Bush administration pre-war manipulation of intelligence, the press has been asking: So what new evidence do the Democrats have in this matter?

Tomorrow, The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Doug Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It shows that an al-Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.

"The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," Jehl writes. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as `credible' evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Man, that New York Times really is good at the Investigative Journalism. It's not like we haven't had plenty of previous evidence -- like say from the Secret Service that the Niger/Uranium documents were forged, or that Curveball simply couldn't be trusted, the revelation of the Downing Street Minutes that the "facts were being fixed around the policy", Lawrence Wilkerson going bat-shit postal over the Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal, or from the Dulfer Report -- that pretty much everything that Colin Powel told the UN, was Fuckin-A Wrong!

I'm so glad the Times is on the case.

Vyan