Hogaaan!

Can we ever trust what the Bush administration tells us? Tex at Antiwar.com links to a Times of London article about last weeks capture of an al Queda operative. It was originally reported as a major capture, but it seems that Abu Faraj al-Libbi is less Heinrich Himmler and more Col. Klink:

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

That doesn't mean that the capture isn't good news, of course, but it is yet another example of how little trust on should place in the pronouncements of the Bush administration.

UPDATE: In a perhaps related matter, the Professor (no, this guy) and the Derb think that nothing worth blogging about is happening in the world.