The Way of The World

The veracity of the justification by the Whitehouse for going to war in Iraq has taken another knock.

The journalist Ron Suskind has published a book "The Way of The World" in which he claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein, to link the Iraq regime to Al Qaeda.

"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq –- thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the vice president's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq.

There is no link."

The Whitehouse has stated that the claim is nonsense.

Whatever the truth or otherwise of the allegations, no matter what evidence is presented, there will be those who believe them and those who don't.