OBAMA's Trojan Horse - No, He Won't Cave! - by David Corn

[BlueCaliDem]

52. He got it because of 9/11, and cowed Congress with the political capital

he won afterward. There was NO WAY Congress - or we - would have allowed the war in Iraq otherwise. Richard Clarke was there when it all went down, and he writes about it in his book (excellent book, btw, and worth every penny)

Rumsfeld took advantage of 9-11 to push Iraq agenda

I expected to go back to a round of meetings [after September 11] examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq.
On the morning of the 12th DOD's focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda. CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, they said, for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, without a state sponsor-Iraq must have been helping them.
Source: Against All Enemies, by Richard Clarke, chapter 1

http://www.issues2000.org/Archive/Against_All_Enemies_War_+_Peace.htm