wise ;-]

Actually not much more than 8 years or so ... from about 1998 when they
finally realized just how badly they'd screwed the pooch back in 91.

But I didn't get the idea the guy was a mastermind who fooled the US
government into invading Iraq, as much as there's a little post-torture
bravado claiming that he deliberately encouraged the pre-existing
stupidity. And that's bogus.

Anyone with a lick of common sense knows that torture doesn't produce
intelligence. The victim doesn't tell the "truth", he just tells you
what he thinks you want to hear so you'll stop torturing him. They could
have just as easily got him to confess to makin' the moon out of green
cheese.

The story just reinforces what's already known about the
administration's getting their own propaganda echoed back to them. They
believed anything that justified what they wanted to do, no matter how
flimsy the source; and ignored (dismissed) anything that contradicted
their ideology.

This "al qaeda" guy wasn't the only one playing the administration for
suckers. Their main man Chalibi, the guy they expected to form the
post-invasion government, turned out to be spying for Iran all along.