2/22/2002

Although the Defense Intelligence Agency noted that on February 22, 2002, and again in July 2002, that Al Qaeda commander Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi might have fabricated information due to his forceful interrogations, “None of these doubts were shared with Secretary of State [Colin] Powell in the fall of 2002 as America weighed whether to go to war. As a result, the former Al Qaeda commander played an improbably crucial role in Powell’s…arguing the case for a preemptive war against Iraq [in his speech before the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003].”

 – Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Pages 136-137