Iraq attack: any excuse will do: "�A former senior White House aide claimed yesterday that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld almost immediately urged George W. Bush to consider bombing Iraq after the 11 September terrorist attacks.
Richard A. Clarke, the counter-terrorism co-ordinator at the time, recounts in a forthcoming book details of a meeting the day after the attacks when officials considered the American response. Even then, he said, they were certain that al-Qaeda was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement.
'Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq,' Clarke said. 'We all said, 'No, no, al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan.'' "
- posted by geoff @ #