Frank Rich's Astonishing Accusation

Astonishingly, Frank Rich writes that Bush administration officials may have ordered Abu Zubaydah to be tortured in 2002 not because they feared an imminent terrorist attack, as they say, but so he would fabricate a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein:

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Astonishing, if true. If you are wondering about Rich's source, it's this comment by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), who speculated to Rich about why investigators were putting so much heat on Zubaydah:

They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

A politician's speculation leading to a direct charge, in print, of what would probably be an impeachable or indictable offense. Astonishing.