Juan Cole on Libi

A couple of days ago I ranted about the al Qaeda detainee who told the Bushies what they wanted to hear about collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. Juan Cole, who knows a lot more about the Middle East than I do, has more on the subject.

Libi's story about Iraq training al-Qaeda, delivered after 9/11, is of a piece with the rest of this strategy. It was aimed at instigating a war by the US on Iraq.

All of these wars were intended to stir hatred of the US invader throughout the Muslim world, to weaken the "puppet" governments of the Middle East that were allied with the US and make them ripe for overthrow, and to mire the US in a series of Islamic quagmires that would sap its will and strength and ultimately force its withdrawal from the region.
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Even though Libi recanted his earlier disinformation, Vice President Dick Cheney has continued to rely on his allegations. Note that it should no longer be necessary for the US to depend on a single unreliable source such as Libi, since it has captured the Baath intelligence files and should by now know pretty much exactly what the Baath government was up to with regard to terrorism. If the US does not know, it would be because it irresponsibly gave those intelligence files to Ahmad Chalabi.
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Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz allowed themselves to be manipulated by Libi and Chalabi because it suited them.