WASHINGTON - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and al-Qaida on detailed statements made by a prisoner in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and al-Qaida only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of al-Qaida members and others detained as part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and al-Qaida included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

The fact that Libi recanted after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the CIA in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But U.S. officials had not previously acknowledged either that Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Libi contended that his statements had been coerced.

A government official said that some intelligence provided by Libi about al-Qaida had been accurate and that Libi's claims that he had been treated harshly in Egyptian custody had not been corroborated.

A classified Defense Intelligence Agency report issued in February 2002 that expressed skepticism about Libi's credibility on questions related to Iraq and al-Qaida was based in part on the knowledge that Libi was no longer in U.S. custody when he made the detailed statements and that he might have been subjected to harsh treatment, the officials said. They said the CIA's decision to withdraw the intelligence based on Libi's claims had been made because of his later assertions, beginning in January 2004, that he fabricated them to obtain better treatment from his captors.

At the time of his capture in Pakistan in late 2001, Libi, a Libyan, was the highest-ranking al-Qaida leader in U.S. custody.

Commentary:
This is an impeachable offense because Bush failed to verify and re-verify the sources and intelligence being fed to him. (He knew it was false but didn't care.) But then, playing the dumb puppet has worked for him his entire life - it may work for him again. We also know for sure now that the US engaged in torture which is also an impeachable offense and we know Bush lied about it when he said, "we don't torture."

Bush warned intelligence was suspicious

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.

List of Bush Claims haven't Held Up

- On Oct. 7, 2002, during a speech in Cincinnati, the president said Iraq was involved in training al-Qaeda members. It subsequently was learned through Defense Intelligence Agency documents that the sole source for that claim, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a top al-Qaeda operative, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" when he offered that information.