You...You Mean They LIED?!

This at Think Progress, posted by Satyam on Aug 5:

Suskind: White House Ordered Forged, Backdated Letter After Invasion To Concoct Saddam-9/11 Link

A new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind claims that, after the Iraq war began, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a “backdated, handwritten letter” from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to tie Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Here’s what Suskind reports:

– Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, told U.S. and British officials there was no WMD in Iraq, “intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

– In the fall of 2003, the White House ordered CIA Director George Tenet to forge a “fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq” and that Iraq bought yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaeda.

– The letter was commissioned “from the highest reaches of the White House.” “It would have to come from the very top,” Suskind told NPR today.

Also this:

Suskind also said he spoke with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

And in rebuttal, the usual:

White House press spokesman Tony Fratto attacked Suskind today, stating that he “makes a living from gutter journalism” and calling the book one of Suskind’s “bizarre conspiracy theories.”

Well, I hate to say it, but this begins to shake my faith in the Bush Administration a little...

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