Today's Iraq post

I've run across a lot of good Iraq-related articles and posts, so I'll just string them altogether here.

• Bush was informed ten days after that Iraq could not be proven to have any links to 9/11. (This article is quite long, but it is incredibly thorough in analyzing the administration's systematic manipulation and cherry-picking of intelligence to justify the Iraq war.)
  
  
• Transcript of a panel discussion of the basis for and future of the Iraq War. This post is only notable for who was on the panel: Arlen Specter, Rick Santorum, Evan Bayh, Alan Dershowitz, Richard Clarke, Pat Buchanan, Chris Matthews. There is an incredible consensus among these men on a variety of points, despite the political diversity of the group.
  
  
• Condoleezza Rice talks withdrawal. "I suspect that American forces are not going to be needed in the numbers that they're there for all that much longer..."
  
  
• Juan Cole has more on the alleged Bush plan to bomb Al-Jazeera's office. Britain, on the other hand, is cracking down severely on any news source that reveals more details of the memo, threatening serious legal action. That says to me that there is certainly something in the memo that Britain and Bush don't want us to see.
  
  One thing I want to point out--it disgusts me that Al-Jazeera showed the films of beheadings on their channel. I don't have any reason to believe that they are actively aiding the Iraqi insurgents or Al Qaeda, and I doubt Bush does either. Bottom line is, there are other ways to eliminate threats than bombing news centers in a country that is friendly to us (Qatar).