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Shipwreck · 05-14-2007, 04:33 AM

From the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States ("The 9/11 Commission Report"), US Government Printing Office, pp. 335-336 :

(bold emphasis mine)

Quote:

Rice told us the the administration was concerned that Iraq would take advantage of the 9/11 attacks. She recalled that in the first Camp David session chaired by the President, Rumsfeld asked what the administration should do about Iraq. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for striking Iraq during "this round" of the war on terrorrism.

(snip)

Secretary Powell recalled that Wolfowitz, - not Rumsfeld -, argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked. Powell said that Wolfowitz was not able to justify his belief that Iraq was behind 9/11. "Paul was always of the view that Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with", Powell told us, "And he saw this as one way of using this event as a way to deal with the Iraq problem".

(snip)

Within the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz continued to press the case for dealing with Iraq. Writing to Rumsfeld on September 17 (2001) in a memo headlined "Preventing More Events", he argued that if there was even a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, maximum priority should be placed on eliminating that threat.

Wolfowitz contended that the odds were "far more" than 1 in 10, citing Saddam's praise for the attack, his long record of involvement in terrorism, and theories that Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi agent and Iraq was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

The next day, Wolfowitz renewed the argument, writing to Rumsfeld about the interest of Yousef's co-conspirator in the 1995 Manilla air plot in crashing an explosives-laden plane into CIA headquarters, and about information from a foreign government regarding Iraqi's involvement in the attempted hijacking of a Gulf Air flight.