How Torture Facilitated Invasion

Professor and author Juan Cole writes in his blog today: "The best
refutation of Dick Cheney's insistence that torture was necessary and
useful in dealing with threats from al-Qaeda just died in a Libyan
prison. ...

"Al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was captured trying to
escape from Afghanistan in late 2001. He was sent to Egypt to be
tortured, and under duress alleged that Saddam Hussein was training
al-Qaeda agents in chemical weapons techniques. It was a total crock,
and alleged solely to escape further pain. Al-Libi disavowed the
allegation when he was returned to CIA custody. But Cheney and Condi
Rice ran with the single-source, torture-induced assertion and it was
inserted by Scooter Libby in Colin Powell's infamous speech to the
United Nations." http://www.juancole.com

Al-Libi's death is being reported by some as a suicide. Human Rights
Watch has called for an investigation.

BENJAMIN DAVIS, (419) 283-9032, ben.davis@utoledo.edu
Professor of law at the University of Toledo College of Law, Davis
said today: "It's remarkably convenient to torture apologists that
Al-Libi turn up dead."
Davis is a member of the Robert Jackson Steering Committee. The
group helped organize 200 groups to sign a statement released today
urging Attorney General Eric Holder "to appoint a non-partisan
independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial
investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President
George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys
formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to
justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush
administration." http://specialprosecutor.us
The group is named for former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson,
who argued as the prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials after World War
II: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an
international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167