June 16, 2004

Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11 New York Times - The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The assertion came in staff reports that offer a chilling, richly detailed chronology of the Sept. 11 plot and rewrite much of the history of the attacks. "Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." The report said that despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda during the 1990's, "they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Repeated contacts, but no results?  Contacts are enough to show a conspiracy.  The left hand doesn’t have to know what the right hand is doing for there to be cooperation at some level.  In fact there is documentation in this report that points to Iraqi/ Al Qaeda  cooperation.  (Staff Statement 16, page 8)  If Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agency in Prague, and discussed cooperation, that with each others help, they would seek to accomplish the deaths of Americans, then you have the basis for a conspiracy. There is evidence, just no proof. Update: Who asked the 9/11 commision to find a link between between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein anyway? 10:44:30 PM

US man gets life in `Virginia jihad' case Toronto Star, Canada - A Maryland man convicted of travelling to Pakistan and seeking to fight with the Taliban against the United States just days after Sept 11 was sentenced yesterday to life in prison. 10:50:54 AM

Q&A: Symantec's John Thompson. In his first five years at the helm of Symantec Corp, CEO and Chairman John W. Thompson has steered the company through a couple of major transformations including shifting its focus from selling consumer software to enterprise-class security software. What is at least as impressive is he and his team did so in a time when almost every major software company was limping through the dot com bubble bursting and subsequent economic downturn, doubling the company's revenues to over $1 billion over that time. [InfoWorld: Top News] 10:35:03 AM

Akamai said a disruption of service at major Internet sites Tuesday morning was caused by "a sophisticated, large-scale attack that Akamai identified as being targeted at specific Web sites that are Akamai customers." Akamai, a Cambridge, Mass., Web-hosting service, said its staff quickly detected the problem and made adjustments along with partners to shut down the source of the attack. The company made the comments in a Wednesday morning summary of Tuesday's events. 10:09:57 AM