Marcy Wheeler writes,

At least according to the Senate narrative, they started discussing torture plans for Abu Zubaydah after February  22, 2002--when DIA first questioned Ibn Sheikh al-Libi's claim of a tie between Iraq and al Qaeda that derived from torture. And they signed the Bybee Memo the day after the second DIA report questioning al-Libi's Iraq-al Qaeda ties. 

How to connect these dots? Easy.

By 2/13/02, Bushco had decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein, so he needed justifications that he could sell to Congress and the American people. Obviously 9/11 was the "frame" but it had to be stretched all the way from Afghanistan to Iraq. Bush settled on two major reasons: possession of WMD's (even though they knew Iraq had none left) and ties between Iraq and al Qaeda (even though they knew they were enemies).

For the following year - right up to the invasion on 3/19/03 - Bushco had to wage guerrilla war with the government's intelligence professionals to support these two Big Lies. To win this war, Dick Cheney had to visit the CIA repeatedly to browbeat and bamboozle skeptical professionals.

Cheney outsourced al-Libi to Egypt to be tortured into "confessing" Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, because the CIA had no in-house torture capability. Obviously that plan was not a brilliant success, since the DIA didn't buy the outsourced tortured "confession."

So Cheney decided torture had to be insourced to U.S. "professionals" whose credibility could not be dismissed by CIA or DIA professionals. Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were exactly the kinds of professionals Cheney needed. So after six months of lawyering, browbeating, and bamboozling, they got the green light to torture Abu Zubaydah.

For the entire eight years of Bushco outsourcing, torture was the one and only job that was insourced - all to make sure Bush got his chance to march into Baghdad to prove to his dad he was a Conqueror, not a Deserter.