Bush is going backwards faster than Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk....
Editor's Note | In the last several weeks, the Bush administration has taken several stunning steps
back from the rhetoric that helped them lead this country to war in Iraq. Bush's move to bring the
international community into the struggle, an act that is vitally necessary, was a grand departure from
the words sopken before the fighting started. Recall that it was Richard Perle, chief architect of this
war, who penned an editorial on March 21 entitled, "Thank God For The Death Of The UN." To have
come from there to here is remarkable.
Now, we have George W. Bush himself attempting to distance his administration from the rhetoric
they used on a daily basis to connect Saddam Hussein with September 11 in the minds of Americans.
Their denials of ever having made that connection fly in the face of current data: Some 70% of the
American people believe that Hussein was personally responsible for the fall of the Trade Towers.
They believe this because the President, and his people, told them this was the case repeatedly.
One clear example of when this connection was made can be found in Bush's own resolution to
Congress, dated March 18 2003, which set forth the parameters of the looming battle. Section 2 of this
resolution described the need for [bold]"necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist
organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized,
committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." This is in the Iraq
resolution. The connection Bush would deny ever having made came, in fact, from his own words and
pen. - wrp
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Bush: No Proof of Saddam Role in 9-11
By Terence Hunt
The Associated Press
Wednesday 17 September 2003
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was
involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — disputing an impression that critics say the
administration tried to foster to justify the war against Iraq.
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties," the president said. But he also said,
"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."
The president's comment was the administration's firmest assertion that there is no proven link
between Saddam and Sept. 11. It came after Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) on
Sunday clouded the issue by saying, "It's not surprising people make that connection" between
Saddam and the attacks.
Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," also repeated an allegation — doubted by many in the
intelligence community — that Mohamed Atta, the lead Sept. 11 attacker, met with a senior Iraqi
intelligence official in Prague five months before Sept. 11.
"We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting
it," Cheney said Sunday. However, other U.S. authorities have said information gathered on Atta's
movement show he was on the U.S. East Coast when that meeting supposedly took place.
Critics of the Bush administration have pointed to statements like Cheney's as evidence that the
administration was exaggerating al-Qaida's prewar links with Saddam to help justify the U.S.-led war
against Iraq.
A recent poll indicated that nearly 70 percent of Americans believed the Iraqi leader probably was
personally involved. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, "I've not seen any indication
that would lead me to believe that I could say that."
The administration has argued that Saddam's government had close links to al-Qaida, the terrorist
network led by Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) that masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Sunday, for example, Cheney said that success in stabilizing and democratizing Iraq would strike
a major blow at the "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many
years, but most especially on 9-11."
Bush himself has taken to referring to Iraq as the central front in the war against terror.
And Tuesday, in an interview on ABC's "Nightline," White House national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said that one of the reasons Bush went to war against Saddam
was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9-11 threat emerged."
Cheney on Sunday was asked whether he was surprised that more than two-thirds of Americans in a
Washington Post poll would express a belief that Iraq was behind the attacks.
"No, I think it's not surprising that people make that connection," he replied.
Rice, asked about the same poll numbers, said, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had
either direction or control of 9-11."
Bush said there was no attempt by the administration to try to confuse people about any link between
Saddam and Sept. 11.
"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," Bush said.
"What the vice president said was is that he (Saddam) has been involved with al-Qaida.
"And al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S.
diplomat. ... There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties."
Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on the man Bush mentioned, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, a senior bin Laden associate who officials have accused of trying to train terrorists in the
use of poison for possible attacks in Europe, running a terrorist haven in northern Iraq — an area
outside Saddam's control before the war — and organizing an attack that killed an American aid
executive in Jordan last year.
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