Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was one of Saddam Hussein's top advisors and was executed in January 2007. A video of his hanging, which showed his severed head, was released to reporters and widely criticized around the world.

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Why would Ron Suskind make up faked letter?

Written by marykittneel on

From: marykittneel.blogspot.com

It isn't even going to be published until tomorrow, but already, the rabid right is working itself into a fine lather (see this comment thread) about The Way of the World, Ron Suskind's new book claiming that the White House used a faked document to try to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Quaeda - specifically 9/11 "mastermind" Mohammad Atta.

The book also alleges that the Bush administration received credible information from a top Iraqi intelligence official that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that they received it well in advance of the March 2003 invasion.

The "letter" was given to a Baghdad reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph and ran on the front page Dec. 14, 2003, coincidentally the day that Saddam Hussein was captured.

Yossi Melman, writing for Israel's Haaretz, says,

The book goes on to say that the British intelligence agency MI6 recruited Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief, Tahir Abd al-Jalil al-Tikriti, and questioned him in Amman two months before the war, and then handed him over to the CIA.

...

Months after the overthrow of the Ba'athist regime, al-Tikriti's CIA handlers requested that he handwrite a letter on official Iraqi government letterhead stating that Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, underwent training in Iraq prior to carrying out the attacks, according to Suskind. In addition, al-Tikriti wrote in the letter that Al-Qaida aided the Iraqi government in obtaining uranium in Niger.

I don't see much reason for Suskind to have made this up, despite what some right wing detractors say. Bush is about the lamest lame duck president ever, and his approval ratings almost can't get any lower. This information would neither hurt Republican presidential candidate John McCain nor help Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Except for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, nobody in Washington has had the balls to even bring up the possibility of Bush being guilty of impeachable offenses, so it is unlikely that Suskind's book would change things at all after the handover to a new administration next January.

Perhaps what is so notable about Suskind's book is that, explosive as the accusations are, it is only one more book in a long string of books - some of them by former White House officials - to point out what the mainstream media failed to until the latter half of 2005: that the Bush administration is remarkably corrupt and has used secrecy and questioned patriotism whenever someone asked inconvenient questions. If the old saw is true that you get the government you deserve, then we have seriously got to clean up our act.

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