By JPOST.COM STAFF
The Bush administration was warned as early as February 2002 that its main informant who claimed of relations between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein is not to be trusted and that he purposely misled his investigators, according to an American military intelligence report presented on Sunday.
The informant, top al-Qaida operative Ibn al-Libi, was caught while serving in the terrorist organization's camps in Afghanistan. In his investigation he revealed that bin Laden's men learned how to make chemical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His interrogators considered the information to be unreliable.
Still, Bush claimed that al-Qaida terrorists were training in Iraq and attempting to use chemical warfare and other weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion of Iraq.
Then-secretary of state Colin Powell used those claims several months later in the UN Security Council to justify the war in Iraq.
Sen. Carl Levin, member of the Senate's Committee of Armed Forces, stated that the report provided conclusive evidence that the Bush administration lied regarding the cause of the war in Iraq and demanded the entire report be published.