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25 June 2004

There were a lot more active contacts with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq

With Al-Qaida, according to the chairman of the 9/11 commission.
The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission said Sunday that al-Qaida had much more interaction with Iran and Pakistan than it did with Iraq, underscoring a controversy over the Bush administration's insistence there was collaboration between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein.

Thomas Kean made the comment even as he and other commissioners tried to steer clear of the debate over one of the administration's primary justifications for invading Iraq.

23 June 2004

If Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so

CIA caved into pressure applied from the Bush administration to go to war with Iraq, so says CIA veteran who ran the hunt for Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999 and is now blasting the current counter-terrorism campaign.

Even grimmer is his prediction of an imminent attack to ensure the Republicans stay in power.

Anonymous, who published an analysis of Al Qaeda last year, called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place. "I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said. "One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."

Also stated was his assessment that Saddam Hussein posed no immediate threat to the United States.