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I don't know why the Bush administration has not done more to connect WTC One to the Iraqis.

In fact, if you're paying attention, the administration has gone out of its way to prevent people from making that obvious connection. The author of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ("KSM"), is directly linked to Ramzi Yousef/Abdul Basit: supposedly, he is the brother of Yousef's mother. Despite the fact that Mohammed is a bigger fish than bin Laden we hardly ever hear about KSM. This is even more surprising when you consider that "KSM" lived for several years in the United States, a fact which somehow, amazingly, failed to come out for a whole year after 9/11. Apparently, the CIA also stubbornly refused to reveal anything about what they know about KSM to a congressional inquiry into 9/11 (see CRISIS IN ACCOUNTABILITY, by Notra Trulock).

So, what is going on here? Can you think of other instances pertaining to 9/11 where it is clear that the government knows more than it is letting on? I can. The government clearly knows more about the anthrax than they have been willing to tell us. Indeed, they have even developed a cover story to distract attention from that fact, as you can easily verify by looking at the timeline of the 10/17/01 NSC discussion of the anthrax documented in Bush at War and the emergence of the "domestic terrorism" stall. Another example would be the question of Mohammed Atta's visits to Prague and his reported rendezvous with an Iraqi agent, Ahmed al-Ani. This was first reported as a simple fact a few weeks after 9/11, and has been repeatedly affirmed by the White House and the Czech authorities ever since, despite a slew of mutually contradictory "debunkings" in various left-wing media. Yet, the question of the meeting has never been squarely bought to the fore by the White House. Why?

What is the link here? The link is that, if the truth about KSM, or the anthrax, or Atta and al-Ani, were clear to the public, then the "big picture" would quickly fall into place. The "big picture" is that 9/11 was an act of war against the United States by Iraq, and Saddam's back-end security -- his threat to anthrax the US population -- is terrifyingly credible, which is why the US is still in no position to name names and retaliate. KSM, al-Ani and the anthrax are each, independently, keys that unlock the whole puzzle, and, for the time being, that is something that cannot be allowed to happen. Expect three fingers to remain firmly plugged in those three dikes for the foreseeable future.

TGS, I've read many of your posts on this topic, and they are indeed well thought out. But something always seems to be "missing" to me regarding this. I just do not see how the approach Bush has taken regarding Iraq is consistent with the concepts in your hypothesis: namely that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11, the anthrax attacks, and has anthrax pre-positioned in the US waiting to be released. The idea that this entire military buildup is a bluff, just seems to be the absolute worst possible political and military strategy they could have come up with to deal with this situation. What could the possible outcomes be? Absent some "lucky break" like a coup, everything is suddenly called off and the troops recalled? The UN, France and Germany, and the "peace movement" would be dramatically empowered. Bush would be dead politically, and would essentially have resigned himself to the fact that he was leaving this problem to president Kerry or Lieberman to handle. Could it possibly be that the national security apparatus has not made Bush aware of these facts, and he is launching this war "in the dark", only to face a major domestic anthrax attack? Once again, he would be dead politically if this were to occur, being seen as having launched the war while unprepared to protect the homeland.

It seems to me that it would have been easy to go with an alternate strategy on Iraq. He could have essentially conducted an intense "covert war" against Iraq, rather then staking his entire presidency on this pursuit of a bluffed "hot war". The risk there would have been that the same AQ proxies would have launched a wider anthrax attack on the US because of the covert war, but at that point, Bush would have to be prepared to come clean on everything, finger Iraq for that attack, and use any means necessary to fight back. In the aftermath of a wide scale anthrax attack on the US, he would have had overwhelming support.