The Left’s latest conspiracy theory
[Posted by Karl]
On Wednesday, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, claimed that the Bush administration authorized Egypt to waterboard top al Qaeda camp commander Ibn al Shaykh al Libi in order to generate phony intelligence connecting Iraq and al Qaeda, as a pretext for the invasion.
The story took a day to go from a lefty blog to CNN. Wilkerson told the cable net, “I couldn’t walk into a courtroom and prove this to anybody, but I’m pretty sure it’s fairly accurate.”
In fact, Wilkerson’s claim is completely bogus, as CNN could have easily discovered:
Al Libi’s original testimony regarding Iraq-al Qaeda links occurred months before Wilkerson says waterboarding was used to get this admission out of him. We know this because the DIA filed a report saying that it did not trust al Libi’s testimony regarding the training of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq in February 2002 -– two months before Wilkerson says the Bush administration authorized the Egyptians to use harsh interrogation methods on al Libi.
So, when Wilkerson writes that “the [Bush] administration authorized [the] harsh interrogation [of al Libi] in April and May of 2002” and al Libi “had not revealed any al Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts” until then, he is clearly wrong. Al Libi, according to the DIA, first discussed this putative tie between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda before Wilkerson says that harsh interrogation techniques were authorized by Vice President Cheney.
At The New Republic, James Kirchick is even more harsh:
[T]he more important thing people should know about Lawrence Wilkerson is that nothing he says can be taken at face value. The man is a third-rate conspiracy theorist and a borderline bigot.
However, even Kirchick leaves out that Wilkerson, now teaching at George Washington University and the College of William and Mary, assigns the Mearsheimer/Walt “Israeli Lobby” paper to his classes:
“I think it contains a lot of what I call the blinding flashes of the obvious,” Wilkerson says. “But that said, [they are] blinding flashes of the obvious that people whispered in corners, not said out loud at cocktail parties, where someone else could hear you.”
Nothing paranoid there, nosiree.
Of course, Wilkerson’s latest baseless accusations have been picked up by lefty conspiracy-theorists like Andrew Sullivan and Joe Conason (and are spreading throught the Sinisphere), without checking the timeline or even wondering why Wilkerson never made the claim until now. It does not matter to them — Wilkerson is their new plastic turkey.
—
Update: FWIW, Wilkerson offered a disjoined non-response to the Weekly Standard.
–Karl
[…] Cross-posted at Patterico. […]
The Greenroom » Forum Archive » The Left’s latest conspiracy theory (e2f069) — 5/15/2009 @ 12:06 pmnever let facts get in the way of a good narrative… %-)
redc1c4 (9c4f4a) — 5/15/2009 @ 12:11 pmBUSH IS EVIL !!!!! CHENEY ORDERED SOMEONE TO BE WATERBOARDED TO FAKE THE REASONS FOR THEIR ILLEGAL AGGRESSIVE IMPERIALISTIC WAR FOR OIL !!!!!
JD (dd7aa0) — 5/15/2009 @ 12:13 pmNow the chickens are coming to roost!
The Emperor (09c9e3) — 5/15/2009 @ 12:23 pmT]he more important thing people should know about Lawrence Wilkerson is that nothing he says can be taken at face value. The man is a third-rate conspiracy theorist and a borderline bigot.
You mean he is a Republican? 🙂
The Emperor (09c9e3) — 5/15/2009 @ 12:25 pmEvidently, The Emperor, you have chosen to abandon simple logic.
SPQR (72771e) — 5/15/2009 @ 12:28 pmWho do you believe, the flawlessly accurate MSM, or some right-wing extremist blog?
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R., (ebf8f5) — 5/15/2009 @ 1:05 pmLovie likes calling us racists.
JD (dd7aa0) — 5/15/2009 @ 1:16 pmThe Wilkerson story has also infested The New Majority blog of David Frum although by a lefty commenters (the majority of commenters), not Frum.
Mike K (2cf494) — 5/15/2009 @ 1:19 pmNow the chickens are coming to roost!
I wish someone would bring the chickens home to ROAST. I’m hungry.
Conspiracy kooks follow the conspiracies where ever they make them up. They can’t resist their own kookiness.
Vivian Louise (c0f830) — 5/15/2009 @ 1:29 pmFrum allows leftist commenters? I thought he was part of the rethuglican facist censorship machine.
carlitos (aa025a) — 5/15/2009 @ 1:30 pmI wish someone would bring the chickens home to ROAST. I’m hungry.
Vivian Louise, have you no shame? Wishing harm on innocent Galliform-Americans! Apologize to Gaia and go gnaw on some tubers or better yet, Tofurkey!
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R., (ebf8f5) — 5/15/2009 @ 1:42 pm😉
Of course he ends up with a sinecure in academia.
*sigh*
Patricia (94c68d) — 5/15/2009 @ 1:51 pmIt always comes to either Bush lied or the Evil Joooos – second verse, same as the first.
Dmac (1ddf7e) — 5/15/2009 @ 2:05 pmDmac,
Wilkerson knows the whole song.
Karl (eb6312) — 5/15/2009 @ 2:20 pmI’d like to remind our out of control libtard friends.
What Bush/Cheney did.
WORKED.
gus (36e9a7) — 5/15/2009 @ 3:17 pmKarl – I can’t believe you’re dissin’ one of Cyrus Sanai’s favorite people.
daleyrocks (5d22c0) — 5/15/2009 @ 3:18 pmI am the King of Luxembourg. I wouldn’t testify to that in court, but I’m pretty sure it’s accurate.
Ag80 (db38af) — 5/15/2009 @ 4:07 pm[…] – first, the “story” (via Karl at Patterico’s): (CNN) — Finding a “smoking gun” linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main […]
CNN takes at face value the word of conspiracy hack who worked under Powell « Sister Toldjah (52e518) — 5/15/2009 @ 4:24 pmKarl,kicking that a$$ once again.
Baxter Greene (8035ae) — 5/15/2009 @ 4:50 pmCan we just call you Cheney from now on.
Boo friggin hooo…something else Nancy Pelosi was “unaware of”
D-bags. All of em.
Bear1909 (19667d) — 5/15/2009 @ 5:00 pmThe late Ibn Sheik Al Libi, was pointed out by Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa, planner of
narciso (996c34) — 5/15/2009 @ 6:11 pmthe Pam 103 over Lockerbie, and Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence to Ben Bonk, CIA DeputyNear East Division chief in one of Susskind’s books. It was thereby imperative that we find out everything he knew, so he was capturedand shipped to the ‘tender mercies’ of the Mukharabat. They employed methods much more aggressive than mere waterboarding.
Wasn’t the media and the Left just going nuts over Cheney’s comments that he preferred having Limbaugh over Powell, and presumably his butt boy Wilkerson, in the Republican party. I appreciate their concern.
daleyrocks (5d22c0) — 5/15/2009 @ 6:55 pmKarl
Thought you would be interested to see this new Pincus article:
No Waterboarding Used in Questioning On Al-Qaeda Ties to Iraq, Officials Say
Topsecretk9 (4f10b9) — 5/15/2009 @ 8:34 pmTSK9 – Any idea if Scott Horton and Larry Wilkerson have been seen in the same place together?
daleyrocks (5d22c0) — 5/15/2009 @ 8:44 pmDaley
LOL. Is Scott busy misreading Spanish papers again?
Topsecretk9 (4f10b9) — 5/15/2009 @ 8:50 pmSHOCKA, Olbergasm and MadCow were both pushing this conspiracy theory tonite.
JD (298166) — 5/15/2009 @ 8:57 pmTopsecretk9,
Of course, the denial will only fuel the conspiracy theory.
Karl (3bf5f8) — 5/15/2009 @ 9:06 pmI wish I hadn’t gone to TNR to read that. The comments were vile.
otcconan (202adc) — 5/16/2009 @ 6:39 amO-H M-Y G-O-D! It ALL makes sense! Bush had his picture taken with that plastic turkey – which was a signal to the Kurds “near” Turkey to send up a signal fire, whereby the smoke clouded the sky – rendering the chinese satallites “blind” for exactly 27 minutes – which is the time it took the black helicopters to fly out of Baghdad with “Captain Nelson” who was taking Jeanne out of her beloved Baghdad in her bottle. She was the one who later allowed Bush to win the election by using her head-nod magic to cause the last chads to fall – which simultaneously caused the government in Chad to be overrun by moeslum radicals (know as “free” radicals because they were not paid by the CIA)…
Then the CIA decided to waterboard Vince Foster – which didn’t work at first because, well, he was dead. But then he “talked” – which at first sounded like gurgling water coming out of his upended carcass, but it really was the admission they (CIA/NSA/FBI/NBC/PBS) needed to set in motion the elaborate frame up they put on Nancy Pelosi. She immediately left to brief the white house, but was intercepted and was replaced by the Pelosi-bot 3000 – a semi-life-like cyborg that is designed to self-destruct the Democratic congressional majority. They were going to do the same thing to Rahm Emmanuel – but it turns out the Ram-bot 3000 could not match the destructive power of the actual man – so they re-configured the Ram-bot as President Obama’s fact-checker – which was promptly thrown into the deepest part of the Atlantic ocean, ironically in front of the entire washington press corps who later published the story under the headline “Obama smells even better than he looks – like fresh bread coming out of the oven with a hint of cimmamon.”
Californio (6657ce) — 5/17/2009 @ 1:20 amComrades!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEX5_b-DZI4
(question: what is the difference between Obama-bots rally and this stalin movie? The stalin movie has more american flags in it..)
Oh, note that in section 3:48, Stalin promises to save 18 Trillion dollars( opps! rubles) on post-war healthcare for everyone.
4:47 “Natasha! I thought the republicans got you!” “No comrade boyfriend, we nationalized the banks and auto industry and the resulting death of the economy crippled them!” ha! ha ha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHa!
Californio (6657ce) — 5/17/2009 @ 1:32 amCalifornio,
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407) — 5/17/2009 @ 6:35 amYour scenarios seem eerily plausible — more so than anything Pelosi says.