Now I Bail Out Lawrence Wilkerson (Sort Of)

Lawrence Wilkerson, former aide to Colin Powell, has been mocked for his dubious claim that Qaeda terrorist al-Libi, who was rendered to the Egyptians in January 2002 and had confessed to an Al Qaeda-Iraq link by Feb 2002, provided critical but false intelligence to the CIA just before Colin Powell's UN speech in February 2003.  In fact, Wilkerson insisted that the "new" al-Libi evidence, by then a year old, convinced Colin Powell's of the existence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

It turns out that Wilkerson, who is passing himself off as an authority on the detainee program, is talking about the wrong detainees and the wrong Qaeda-Iraq link.  This is from the Feb 6 2003 Times reporting on the Powell UN speech (my emphasis):

An intelligence breakthrough in the last several weeks made it possible for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to set forth the first evidence of what he said was a well developed cell of Al Qaeda operating out of Baghdad that was responsible for the assassination of the American diplomat Laurence Foley last October.

The breakthrough was the work of a coalition of intelligence services from the United States, Britain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, according to a senior official from one of the coalition countries.

The Qaeda network based in Iraq has operated for the last eight months under the supervision of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin who is also a veteran of the Afghan war against the former Soviet Union, Mr. Powell said.

Critical information about the network emerged from interrogations of captured cell members conducted under unspecified circumstances of psychological pressure, the coalition official said. But a lucky break also figured prominently -- a satellite phone conversation gave away the location of a Qaeda operative, Mr. Zarqawi's deputy, driving out of Iraq.

Until about three weeks ago, Mr. Powell was said to be reluctant to go before the Security Council with a case connecting Al Qaeda with the Iraqi leadership. ''Colin did not want to be accused of fabricating or stretching the truth,'' a coalition official said.

That all changed, the official said, when the interrogation of Mr. Zarqawi's deputy began to yield the first detailed account of the network's operations in Iraq, the Middle East and Europe.

The network was planning terrorist attacks in a half dozen European countries, Mr. Powell said, adding that recent police raids in France and Britain, where one police officer was killed, stem from the disruption of the Iraq-based network. About 116 operatives have been connected to it, he said.

When all the shards of intelligence came together today, along with new information on Iraq's secret programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Mr. Powell's presentation was a more detailed and well-documented bill of particulars than many had expected.

Here is the relevant portion of Powell's UN speech.  Although al-Libi is mentioned, the Zarqawi link discussed by the Times is featured more prominently.

So Wilkerson is right that late-breaking intelligence from the interogation of detainees under uncertain circumstances closed the sale with Colin Powell.  Have those detainees since recanted and explained that Zarqawi was not operating in Iraq?  Probably not.

As to Wilkerson's utter confusion on which intelligence swayed Powell, folks can judge for themselves the impact on his credibility.

Comments

[bad]

Joe Klein needs to be a part of O's administration:

"There's something tragic about him too," Klein said, referring to Krauthammer's confinement to a wheelchair, the result of a diving accident during his first year of medical school. "His work would have a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he's writing about."

Klein is an ass.

LUN

[What was she doing in Jordan, anyway?]

Ah, Laurence Foley. That Laurence Foley. He who had been with USAID in Africa and probably knew the truth about Yellowcake. Cryptic commenter thought that Val Plame was involved in her death, and I certainly wondered, too. It's not as if her husband was an honest man or anything.

[bad]

The blogosphere needs to go ape-s*ht on Klein. And contrast and compare his statement with Obama's Special Olympics reference.

Oh, and double dibs on Krauthammer....

[Jane]

Bad,

I twittered it. (Klein on Krauthammer).

[bad]

Thanks Jane!!!!!!!

That SOB needs to be savaged.

[What was he doing in Jordan, anyway?]

Well, heck, of course I meant 'his death' above. Just why was he targeted, anyway. And why was Val over there? It's about time for the professionals in the CIA to clear the air about the Val and Joe clown show, but good old Walter Pincus was deep into the disinformation on that one, too.
=======================================

[verner]

every word Klein has ever written is not worth one of Dr. K's WaPo columns.

Klein has NO CLASS.

[bad]

Joe Klein is another example of that lefty compassion and sensitivity, verner.

[bad]

Byron York on how GOP beat Obama on closing Guantanamo.

LUN

[narciso]

Well, Klein is on the Journolist, along with Yglesias, the other Klein, now at the post, Schreiber, Orzag, Alter, the whole parade of horribles, ditto on Krauthammer.

[bad]

I'm still trying to figure out why Klein thinks Krauthammer is blind because he's in a wheelchair.

Where, exactly, are Klein's eyes?

Let's see...with Klein's head up his ass.....oh my...now I get it....

[jimmyk]

Don't you love that word "nuanced"? I guess it's shorthand for "more in accord with my own."

[narciso]

What does Rick call it rectal/cranial inversion; this is a particularly obtuse version of it.

It does seem curious how Zarquawi would return to back to his old haunting grounds in Amman, of all places, from his sanctuary
in Kurdistan, if he wasn't both tied to AQ
and at least have cooperation with the Mukharabat. He resembled Abu Nidal in that regard. Plame's part in this, debriefing the Iraqi scientists supposedly for DB/ANABASIS according to McGuire, wasn't enough to wring a charge of the Espionage Act, much less the Welch act

[bad]

Mark Steyn:

Not to be too gloomy, but the country feels like it's seizing up. It's as if California and New York have burst their bodices like two corpulent gin-soaked trollopes and rolled over the fruited plain to rub bellies over the Mississippi. If you're underneath, it's not going to be fun.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

LUN

[Danube of Thought]

Isn't this the Wilkerson thread?

[narciso]

Yes, Danube, but we've found him such a
slimy tick, that the thread moves on.

[hit and run]

I'll use this thread as my OT jumping off point.

mrs hit and run and I picked the kids up from school yesterday. One of the teachers walked princess hit and run to the car, and was holding an ice pack on her cheek. princess hit and run was crying. Apparently she took a nasty fall, running down a hill of rocks at recess, faceplanting halfway down. She has pretty good welts on her face and chest, with no marks on her hands at all from trying to cushion her fall.

Poor thing.

When we got home, I carried princess hit and run up to our room to lay down and watch some tv. As I was bending over to put her in bed, she started crying, only this time she was saying it was her stomach.

She hurled her Cheeze Nips all over the carpet.

Well, the neighbor we carpool with stayed home from school with what her mom called a stomach bug. So, there you go on the puking.

Only, after princess hit and run threw up a second time, mrs hit and run called the neighbor to inquire about the stomach bug, and the neighbor said her daughter had not thrown up, and "upset tummy" was a more accurate description.

So, thinking the upchucking could be related to the fall, mrs hit and run took princess hit and run to an urgent care center nearby, who after a few tests told mrs hit and run to take princess hit and run to the hospital for a cat scan.

So I took hit and run jr to a neighbor's and met them at the hospital, at which point princess hit and run promptly tossed her cookies all over the floor in the ER admissions hallway.

But, once we got back to radiology, princess hit and run did the cat scan perfectly still without complaint. After a while the nurse came out and told us we would be spending the night in the hospital and took us back to a room in the ER to wait for the doctor.

Doc came in and told us they found three areas of concern in the cat scan and wanted to observe princess hit and run overnight.

At another hospital (one with a PICU).

So, princess hit and run got to go for a ride in the biggest ambulance I've ever seen, with mrs hit and run riding shotgun, and me following behind in our car across town.

They hooked her up to the machines, got us all settled, and sometime around 1am we all crashed. They came in every couple of hours to wake princess hit and run and make sure she was responsive.

The pediatric neurosugeon came in fairly early this morning and chatted us up for a bit. His take was that having princess hit and run in the hospital overnight was overly cautious, to him the scans weren't as bad as other doctors were reading them, but you can never be too careful, so it's probably for the best.

princess hit and run ate a good breakfast, a bevy of doctors and nurses came in to do the exact same tests (squeeze my fingers as hard as you can, touch your finger to your nose, let me shine this flashlight in your eyes, does it hurt when I touch you here, etc) and then they were about to start the release process, when the last doc said to princess hit and run, "are you ready to go home....or do you want to go play in the play room?" which added an extra hour onto our stay at Moses A. Cone Hospital.

All in all a pretty scary ordeal, but one that could have been a lot worse.

princess hit and run is a damn fine trooper, with deadly aim for a barf bucket, if only daddy would have one ready for her before she blows.

[bad]

Oh HIT!! What a scary experience. These things are so much easier when they happen to one's self rather than a loved one. Especially one's child. God is great.

[She was probably flapping her wings.]

If there was any injury to the head, not unlikely since she didn't use her extremities to break her fall, then that was most likely a mild concussion. Watch her carefully and ask her about any neck complaints.
=================================

[Captain Hate]

Concussions make you barf for sure; I got a pretty severe one 32 years ago when I took a header into a basketball support post and hurling in the emergency room was actually one of the more pleasant moments of the entire experience because at least it was over quick and I felt better afterward.

[hit and run]

[[She was probably flapping her wings]]

HAH! That's what I kept telling all the doctors and nurses.

We go to her regular doc in a couple days just to check in and to the neurosurgeon in a couple of weeks to follow up.

[[I got a pretty severe one 32 years ago]]

Wow, me too. Although it may have been 30 years ago. While playing football at recess in 2nd grade, this man's son* knocked me out. Well, I didn't actually lose consciousness, but I was not exactly consciously coherent. A couple hours after recess a teacher started noticing odd behavior and called my parents. I have no memory of that day until mid-afternoon on the couch in my parents house, people all standing over me making a big fuss. My parents called a doctor who just said to keep an eye on me, no doctor or hospital visit.

--------------
*Tony Liscio, former OL for the Dallas Cowboys, LUN

[Captain Hate]

Hit,

I was totally KOed and out for like 5 minutes. While I was out somebody called the cops because that was before 911; I came to just before he got there and was totally disoriented. I never had a memory of what happened subsequently had to ask my buds: I tried to steal an inbounds pass and tripped over a guy's leg and went headfirst into the metal support; they said it sounded like a baseball bat hit the post.

I was out of it for about a week; Mrs Hate tried to do a good job of taking care of me but at a time like that all you want to do is sleep and unscramble your circuits. My I/Os were a bit screwy for a while which caused some inner panic but everything turned out fine. I definitely have sympathy for people with head traumas because sometimes it seems like your inner self goes into hiding until everything's been fixed.

Needless to say I was a bit wary about taking the ball to the hoop for a while after that.

[Ann]

Wow, hit. I so glad everything turned out okay. Give her kisses and hugs from JOM.

[maryrose]

Hit:
Nothing can be more frightening. Sounds like a mild concussion. Good idea to stay overnight to be on the safe side. Little H and R princess is a real trooper.She's tough like her old man.

[Now, that's flying.]

I once knew of a little girl with a forehead laceration she claimed came from a fan blade. Her mother was sure it couldn't be that because there was no fan in the room. It turns out the little angel had been jumping off the dresser onto the bed and hit the ceiling fan.

[cathyf]

Wow, hit -- we have a saying in our house when some kid looks like s/he is going to do something stupid: "You know, it's not my day to go to the emergency room." (Ok, we use it for "kids" of all ages.) Let's just hope that PH&R didn't become too enamored of the hospital play room!

[hit and run]

[[Let's just hope that PH&R didn't become too enamored of the hospital play room!]]

The good news is, any jealousy that hit and run jr felt by not getting to go to the hospital (and all the attention princess hit and run got from the ordeal) was eclipsed by the fact that he got to have his first ever sleepover at a friend's house.

[[we have a saying in our house when some kid looks like s/he is going to do something stupid]]

Or when an adult says, "Hold my beer...and watch this!"