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Friday
Jul232004
Friday, July 23, 2004 at 02:35PM
One week after the terrorist attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, White House counterterrorism
director Paul Kurtz wrote in a memo to national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice that no "compelling case" existed for Iraq's
involvement in the attacks and that links between al Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein's government were weak. Not only did Osama bin Laden resent the
Iraqi government's secularism, Kurtz's classified memo stated, but
there was no confirmed information about collaboration between them on
weapons of mass destruction. Yesterday, after a lengthy investigation,
the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
laid out a detailed body of evidence supporting Kurtz's view. Although
recent polls have shown that more than 40 percent of the American
public is still convinced that Iraq collaborated with al Qaeda and had
a role in the terrorist attacks, the commission reported finding no
evidence of a "collaborative operational relationship" between the two
or an Iraqi role in attacking the United States. [more]