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

In other words, we have a guy who we don't really believe, so we hand him over to the Egyptians to kick the crap out of him until he sings a song we do like? And then we start a war over it?

This is really, amazingly simple, because we have similar cases. When a police department does something like this, pretty much everyone involved loses their jobs, probably gets criminally prosecuted, certainly gets civilly prosecuted, and, if they're lucky, they only look like Daryl Gates at the end of the day.

The White House needs a house cleaning by guys with badges.