Pentagon does al-Qaida u-turn

The Pentagon’s number two official has backed down after saying that key lieutenants of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were plotting with Saddam Hussein loyalists to kill Americans in Iraq.

In a television interview on Thursday’s anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said “a great many” bin Laden operatives were working to link up with remnants of Saddam’s regime to attack Americans.

But yesterday Wolfowitz – an architect of US policy in Iraq – said in an interview with The Associated Press that he has misspoken and stressed he was, in fact, referring to only one man – bin Laden supporter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the few names that Bush administration officials had previously used to assert links between al Qaida and Iraq before the war.