I just happened to find Dougie Feith’s responses to Questions for the Record the Senate Intelligence Committee asked him in 2003…
He said his little intelligence shop helped formulate policy on:
[T]his is my opinion, even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part ofthe time we were focused on trying to establish a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link, there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.
Or this, coming from Dougie’s boss, Paul Wolfowitz:Mr. Becker also told the Committee that, on several occasions, MG Dunlavey had advised him that the office of Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz had called to express concerns about the insufficient intelligence production at GTMO.
Or this:Mr. Haynes’s memo stated that he had discussed the issue with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary ofDefense for Policy Doug Feith, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Richard Myers and that they concurred with his recommendation.
Anyone want to speculate whether or not Dougie Feith was giving the torturers a script to focus on Iraq’s specious ties to al Qaeda?
In spite of swearing off a preoccupation with the Iraq War and the Torture Memos, I am commenting on this post by emptywheel. As usual, she’s sees more than the rest of us, or at least than I see. I was looking at the exact same data recently, but I didn’t think of Doug Feith [at least not in this context]. But of course that’s a very good question. Doug Feith’s reason-for-being as Paul Wolfowitz’s assistant was to nail down the connection between al Qaeda and Hussein. He put together a slide show. He sent Memos. He probably leaked his own Memo to the Weekly Standard. And as emptywheel unearths, he said it was his task to the Senate Intelligence Committee. It seems like her question ["Anyone want to speculate whether or not Dougie Feith was giving the torturers a script to focus on Iraq’s specious ties to al Qaeda?"] is clearly aimed at a probable truth. Damn, she’s good!
This whole subject is beginning to make me feel sick. I think I’ll feel even worse if no serious repercussions happen to prevent this from ever happening again. And then we have Dick Cheney going around telling everyone that will give him a friendly interview that The Bush/Cheney docturne of torture etc kept America safe. This is outrageous stuff. First on his watch we get attacked on 911, and then he lies us into war and that kills thousand of people, and then he has his old company make millions of dollars in all sorts of ways. Then he plays the media like a fiddle and is now teeling us that we are less safe because we won’t torture and lie like he did when he was there. He is such a evil man and he has lots of company from his good old days at the White House. While he was there the only branch of gov’t he allowed to work without ignoring it was the Executive branch. The Legislative and the Judicial branch were ignored unless Dick wanted something done to his liking. He has to go to jail.