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Clarke: Bush Pressured him to Find Iraq link to 9/11
...These revelations in turn make Tony Blair's behavior more understandable. Right after 9/11, it was entirely possible that London should also be hit. MI-6 would have had an excellent appraisal of the jihadi networks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and would have known that the 40 terrorist training camps in Afghanistan were a seething swamp out of which the mosquitoes kept coming to sting the US and Europe. There were even questions at the time about whether a British subject had trained at one of the flight schools.

So, Blair and the British establishment must have been taken aback at the bizarre early stance of the Bush administration, that they intended hit Iraq and leave Bin Laden alone. Indeed, Blair must have been absolutely frantic that the weird Bush crew might plunge the Middle East into chaos while leaving the main threat still operating. So Blair frantically flies to DC, makes an alliance with Powell, and makes a devil's bargain. The Bushies can have Iraq if they want it. But only at a price: They must take care of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan first. If they do it in that sequence, Blair would provide them a cover against charges of complete unilateral aggression.

The level of cynicism among the anti-Iraq hawks like Wolfowitz, in the wake of a huge national tragedy like September 11, is breathtaking. Even Wolfowitz admitted to Bush that the likelihood Iraq had anything to do with it was between 10 and 50 percent. And, he almost certainly knew that there was no link at all....