The cancer apparently helped begin this disaster as well:

Iban al Shakh al Libby was apparently taken to Cairo, [former FBI agent Jack] Clonan told the BBC, after being captured in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

"He (Libby) claims he was tortured in jail and that would be routine in Egyptian prisons," Grey said. "What he claimed most significantly was a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state) Colin Powell as a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq," he told the broadcaster.

Powell claimed in a UN Security Council meeting in February 2003, weeks before a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, that the country under Saddam Hussein had provided weapons training to Al-Qaeda, saying he could "trace the story of a senior terrorist operative", whom Grey alleges is Libby.

"At the time, the caveats to say this intelligence was extracted under torture were not provided," Grey said.

This cancer, so beloved of this torture-friendly administration, helped generate the untruths that so many of us then believed as a reason to go to war. And in turn, it led to more torture, which the vice-president regards as a "no-brainer". In fact, it merely proves that the vice-president has no brain, when it comes to matters of intelligence-gathering.