Friday, March 19, 2004

The Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks against New York and Washington, according to a new first-person account by a former senior counterterrorism adviser inside the White House. Richard Clarke, the president's counterterrorism coordinator at the time of the attacks, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained on Sept. 12 - after the administration was convinced with certainty that al-Qaida was to blame - that, ``there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.''