by TChris

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a horrifying story in 2003 -- the story of Jumana Hanna, a victim of cruel and abusive treatment (including electric shocks and rape) while imprisoned under Saddam Hussein's regime. Now, it seems, the story is untrue.

A writer who was helping Hanna develop a book proposal tried to verify her claims, and learned that the evidence just isn't there.

In August of last year, as Ms. Solovitch began to try to verify details about Ms. Hanna's experiences, inconsistencies began to appear. An Iraqi doctor who examined her at the request of American authorities discounted her story of rape and abuse, Ms. Solovitch reported. A National Guardsman who was assigned to investigate Ms. Hanna's claims of a mass grave in the yard of the police academy in Baghdad turned up some cow bones but nothing else. All nine of the men who had been arrested on Ms. Hanna's word had been released for lack of evidence, the Esquire article reported, with some of them being compensated for wrongful imprisonment.

Hanna also claimed that her husband was executed in the prison where she was tortured, but her in-laws say he's still alive.

The Washington Post, duped into reporting Hanna's allegations as fact, is now "trying to determine how Ms. Hanna got refugee status and gained entry into the United States."