in a libyan prison being visited by his family. this video was recently located by michael isikoff. within weeks of his interrogation in egypt, al libi coughs up this story that he hadn t told the fbi before, that saddam was training al qaeda in chemical and biological weapons. it s the single most frightening story that could have been told post-9/11. almost from the outset the intelligence community has doubts about the claim. a 2002 cia report states that questions persist about al libi s forthrightness and truthfulness and that in some instances he seems to have fabricated information. after the invasion, al libi will recant the story that was extracted by the egyptians brutal interrogation. what we said at the time was,
i felt betrayed as an american and a scientist. i can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how iraq provided training in these weapons to al qaeda. fortunately, this operative is now detained and he s told his story. powell is referring to ibin al sheikh al libi, the same detainee the cia labeled a fabricator. powell takes 90 minutes to run through his persuasive litany of evidence. much of it will turn out to be, at best, inaccurate. thank you, mr. president. if you look at that speech in retrospect, there s a little too much of what we think and not enough of what we don t know. there s too much servitude in the speech. that s not secretary powell s problem. that s on us as intelligence professionals. secretary of state powell set aside his personal misgivings and staked his global reputation for integrity on this one
left the iraqi government it turns out could not continue to hold them. several hundred u.s. service members have been ordered back to iraq, bolstering u.s. embassy security, embedding with iraqi troops. we re at a moment in our history that calls for a good and vigorous national debate about how our country should respond to what s happening now in iraq. what we ve had instead is deja vu. same architects who led us into that war a decade ago sharing their self-proclaimed expertise about what we should do in iraq now. and while it is maddening to see those same voices being treated as experts on the very subject they were so famously wrong about, it s more important than that even to remember that they weren t just wrong. the iraq war gets short handed now as an intelligence failure. u.s. policymakers were just acting on bad information. that is not what the iraq war was. it was a deception. and this is important. it was the deliberate manipulation of intelligence in order to
that war, we find ourselves engaged in a national debate about potentially going back. sunni militants on the march in iraq, overtaking the same cities the u.s. military fought to hold years earlier when u.s. troops left the iraqi government it turns out could not continue to hold them. several hundred u.s. service members have been ordered back to iraq, bolstering u.s. embassy security, embedding with iraqi troops. we re at a moment in our history that calls for a good and vigorous national debate about how our country should respond to what s happening now in iraq. what we ve had instead is deja vu. same architects who led us into that war a decade ago sharing their self-proclaimed expertise about what we should do in iraq now. and while it is maddening to see those same voices being treated as experts on the very subject they were so famously wrong about, it s more important than that even to remember that they weren t just wrong. the iraq war gets short handed now as an i
are going to get shot at and perhaps civilians might get harmed. it took a lot of planning to carry out this operation. we are told this is something they have been trying to do and planning to do for several months. they even had a chance last october when the u.s. captured another terrorist, al libi, who was involved in the 1998 embassy bombing case, and at that time, they thought they had a chance to get abu khattalah as well and that didn t prove to be the case. they finally did get an opportunity today i m sorry, over the weekend, and they grabbed him. okay. evan, stand by. arwa, let me go to you. i watched your whole piece from last year and the fact that you tracked this man down, ahmed abu khattalah and sat with him in this cafe. he took at issue your tone, it sounded like his fear of talking to u.s. officials would be that it would be more of an