other conspiracy theories put forward." Then Australian Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed on multiple occasions the role of oil in the Iraq Invasion: "We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil." In early 2003 John Howard stated, "No criticism is more outrageous than the claim that United States behaviour is driven by a wish to take control of Iraq's oil reserves." Economist Gary S. Becker stated in 2003 that "if oil were the driving force behind the Bush Administration’s hard line on Iraq, avoiding war would be the most appropriate policy". According to economist Ismael Hossein-Zadeh (2006): "there is no evidence that, at least in the case of the current invasion of Iraq, oil companies pushed for or supported the war. On the contrary, there is strong evidence that, in fact, oil companies did not welcome the war because they prefer stability and predictability to periodic oil spikes that follow war and political convulsion". Political scientist John S. Duffield wrote in 2012 that "no compelling evidence, either in the form of declassified documents or participants' memoirs, has yet emerged indicating that oil was a prominent factor or constant consideration in the thinking of decision makers within the Bush administration". Political scientist Jeff Colgan wrote in 2013 that "Even years after the 2003 Iraq War, there is still no consensus on the degree to which oil played a role in that war." Colgan said that the fact that oil contracts were awarded to non-American companies, including Russian and Chinese corporations, is evidence against the view that the war was for oil. Journalist Muhammad Idrees Ahmad wrote in 2014 that: Iraqi links to terrorist organizations Along with Iraq's alleged development of weapons of mass destructions, another justification for invasion was the purported link between Saddam Hussein's government and terrorist organizations, in particular al-Qaeda. In that sense, the Bush administration cast the Iraq war as part of the broader War on Terrorism. On February 11, 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress that "seven countries designated as State Sponsors of TerrorismIran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korearemain active in the US and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans". As with the argument that Iraq was developing biological and nuclear weapons, evidence linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was discredited by multiple US intelligence agencies soon after the invasion of Iraq.