What a tangled web Bush weaves

[Cloud9]

Wow. Like, oh my gawd, I'm soooo surprised.








Iraq: The Aftermath
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Posted on Thu, Sep. 18, 2003

Bush: Sept. 11, Iraq not linked
`NO EVIDENCE' FOUND OF PREVIOUS CLAIM
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday that there has been ``no evidence'' that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, disavowing a link that had been hinted previously by his administration.

``No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th,'' the president said after a meeting at the White House with lawmakers.

In stating that position, Bush clarified an issue that has long been left vague by his administration. Sunday, Vice President Cheney said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that success in Iraq means ``we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.''

A Washington Post poll last month found that 69 percent of Americans thought it at least likely that Saddam had a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Polling experts said Americans held that view mostly because of an instinctive suspicion of Saddam, but Democrats and some public-opinion experts said Bush and his aides exploited that impression by implying a link.

Bin Laden link

In his May 1 speech announcing the end of major combat in Iraq, Bush said that ``the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001.'' He added: ``With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.''

Bush, while seeing no link between Saddam and the attacks, said Wednesday that Iraq was linked to Osama bin Laden's organization. ``There's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al-Qaida ties,'' he said.

Some terrorism experts dispute the extent of such ties, but the issue is not disputed as vigorously as the link between Saddam and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sunday, Cheney revived the possibility that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer five months before the attack, saying ``we just don't know'' whether the allegation is true.

But an FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting, and the CIA has always doubted it took place.

Cheney defends action

Cheney, speaking to a meeting of the Air Force Association on Wednesday, delivered an impassioned defense of the Bush administration's actions in Iraq, and especially of its strategy of acting pre-emptively against perceived threats.

``Some people, both in this nation and abroad, have questions about that strategy,'' Cheney said. ``Make no mistake: President Bush is acting to protect the American people against further attacks, even when that means moving aggressively against would-be attackers.''

Some analysts have concluded that the intelligence problems the Bush administration has had in Iraq, most notably not finding any weapons of mass destruction, have made future such preventive actions unlikely.

In a talk to congressional staffers this week, Andrew Krepinevich, the director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent defense think tank, said that the discovery that ``there was no imminent danger'' from Iraq made it unlikely that the American people would again support such a preventive action.


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