CIA had doubts on Iraq link to al-Qaida
“The debunking of the Bush administration’s pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.
As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.
The interrogation reports of two senior al-Qaida members, both in US custody, showed that the CIA had reason to doubt the allegations of a connection between Saddam’s regime and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.”
Congress reluctantly moves toward challenging Bush on WMD
“The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq andnew claims that evidence of the threat was manipulated are edging Congress toward a position many members had hoped to avoid: that of challenging a popular wartime president.
After voting President Bush broad powers to use force in Iraq, members on both sides of the aisle are now questioning whether the move to war was based on sound intelligence – or at least demanding a fuller accounting.”