WASHINGTON - March 22 - Disclosures yesterday and today by former Bush Administration counter-terrorism advisor Richard A. Clarke that the President and his team were intent on invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein come as no surprise, said Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

In an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" last night and in a book being released today, Clarke said Bush and his top military and foreign policy advisors seemed intent on linking 9/11 to Hussein as a justification for an invasion. "The crisis was manufactured," Clarke writes in his book, "Against All Enemies."

"More evidence continues to emerge every day," said Kucinich, "that the statements I made on the floor of the House of Representatives in opposition to the President's war resolution in 2002 were correct."

In his speech on the House floor on October 10, Kucinich stated, "Iraq was not responsible for 9/11.... There is no proof Iraq worked with al-Qaeda to cause 9/11." A day earlier, he challenged the Bush administration regarding "serious and substantial questions" and "contradictory" information supplied to the Senate to justify passage of the carte blanche resolution, including a letter from CIA Director George Tenet calling it "unlikely" that Iraq would initiate an attack against the U.S. if not provoked.

The new revelations by Clarke "make it clear that the Administration 'cooked the books' to win Congressional support for the Iraqi war resolution," Kucinich said. Disclosures by Clarke, when coupled with other evidence, including similar charges by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill earlier this year, "corroborate the assertion that the Bush Administration had a policy to attack Iraq following 9/11."

"We now know the truth. We know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. We know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, with al Qaeda's role in 9/11, or with the anthrax attack upon this country. We know that Iraq had neither the intention nor the capability of attacking the United States and that Iraq never tried to acquire uranium from Niger.

"We know the attack on Iraq represented a colossal blunder by this Administration which has led to the loss of more than 570 of the young men and women who have served this country, and to the loss of the lives of countless innocent Iraqi civilians. And we know that this senseless and illegal occupation of a country that did not attack us or threaten us must end."

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