The administrations defense for “rendition” has taken another strong hit.
This morning’s

New York Times gives us proof of that:

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.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad
intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration’s
heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda
members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts.
The Bush administration used Mr. Libi’s accounts as the basis for its prewar
claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included
training in explosives and chemical weapons.

[..]

In statements before the war, and without mentioning him by name,
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then the
secretary of state, and other officials repeatedly cited the information
provided by Mr. Libi as “credible” evidence that Iraq was training Qaeda
members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Among the first and
most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in
Cincinnati in October 2002 that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al
Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.”

The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the
statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. Senator Carl
Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee,
made public last month unclassified passages from the February 2002
document, which said it was probable that Mr. Libi “was intentionally
misleading the debriefers.”

View complete article

here.

Now, while the article does not immediately refer to torture, Egypt is known
for using those techniques. Why else would we allow another country to
“interrogate” someone unless they were using that method. If someone is facing
torture they will lie in order to avoid the anguish. At that time, Bush wanted a
way to link al Qaeda to Iraq (Richard Clarke said they were trying to make the
tie on the afternoon of September 11th) and the only way he was going to get it
was to force someone into saying it – rather it was the truth or not.