Bush now claims he never said Iraq and 9/11 were connected

Even though his SOU addresses and statements from Cheney and Rice dispute the fact.

Read all his lies about 9/11, Iraq, WMD and more at this web site:

http://www.bushlies.net/pages/9/index.htm

Or is that Narnia?

were the ones rewriting history? :sarcasm:

just ONE TIME, while using the term Saddam and 911 in the same sentence dozens and dozens and dozens of times and gleefully so.

because they are!"

He's a drunk and an idiot.

Those sort of remarks are reserved for close Congressional and Presidential elections in which Democratic candidates are summarily branded as "soft on terrorism" for raising concerns over questionable policies that were based on faulty intelligence.

That's the only reaction I have to this man now.

Al Qaeda and terrorists in general. 9/11=terrorists-Saddam. Not surprising that many thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11 or would become responsible for the next 9/11 if BushCo did not *save* us by invading Iraq.

implied it.

http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004a.html

BUSH: I would hope I never have to. I understand how hard it is to commit troops. Never wanted to commit troops. When I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that.

But the enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I can to protect us.

I think that by speaking clearly and doing what we say and not sending mixed messages, it is less likely we'll ever have to use troops.

But a president must always be willing to use troops. It must -- as a last resort.

I was hopeful diplomacy would work in Iraq. It was falling apart. There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was hoping that the world would turn a blind eye.

And if he had been in power, in other words, if we would have said, "Let the inspectors work, or let's, you know, hope to talk him out. Maybe an 18th resolution would work," he would have been stronger and tougher, and the world would have been a lot worse off. There's just no doubt in my mind we would rue the day, had Saddam Hussein been in power.

So we use diplomacy every chance we get, believe me. And I would hope to never have to use force.

But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we've affected the world in a positive way.

he did put 9/11 and Saddam in the same sentence so many times that people thought he said it.

I remember watching him morph Osama into Saddam. He mentioned Osama up until the first anniversary of 9/11 and then without any change in tone, he started talking about Saddam instead. I think some people thought the two were the same person.

He would talk about 9/11 and get the mindset onto al Qaeda, then say Saddam was harboring terrorists. (Of course he wasn't talking about al Qaeda, but unless you listened carefully, you wouldn't know that.) He told us al Qaeda had training camps in Iraq. (Up in the Kurdish areas that Saddam had no control over and we did.)

He told us Saddam was a dangerous man who gassed his own people. (That was 12 years before Bush brought it up, back when we sold or gave him the gas to use against the Iranians. I couldn't tell you why it was OK with the US for 12 years and then suddenly it was a BIG issue.)

There were several times when I would read and reread what he had said to find out what he meant. I kept finding connections which were not specifically connected by his words. I didn't read everything, but what I did read had this same pattern. So, maybe he never did say they were connected, but people sure thought he did by how he didn't say it.

On edit: I don't know why we went to war. I couldn't find a real reason before the war and I can't find a reason (other than to give Halliburton a fortune,) now.

I like the format of the website and will read in depth---thank you. I think ol' * is being as deceiving as usual. The words may not have (?) passed HIS lips but HIS men certainly made the connection in their typical ad nauseum manner! When I heard * make this claim with Jim Lehrer last night I was screaming at the TV!!! Why do these news people let him get away with statements like that? :puke:

look at how quickly he invoked 9/11 in each of his speeches leading up to this week's vote in Iraq. He tied in 9/11 to the war in less than a minute each time.

In the SOTU quote above, he said our Enemies attacked us, but he didn't identify the enemies. It was such a generic term.
We have a lot of enemies now, but if Iran attacks our embassy, to we blow up nigeria in retalliation? Mugabe has spoken out against Bush and the US, he is starving his own people, does that mean we bomb Zimbabwe? France disagreed with Bush on his Iraq war, is France next? Where does it end? We can't go to war with everyone who is against US foreign policy or who dislikes our dictator.

But they are clearly talking about Iraq war, he's implying Iraq had something to do with the attack on us as he's talking about sending troops to Iraq to protect the America people.

This issue bothers me more than anything I have heard lately.

The following article clearly shows they "marketed" the war in Iraq.

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/0510war.html
Bush administration has used 27 rationales for war in Iraq, study says

Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@uiuc.edu

5/10/04

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — If it seems that there have been quite a few rationales for going to war in Iraq, that’s because there have been quite a few – 27, in fact, all floated between Sept. 12, 2001, and Oct. 11, 2002, according to a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All but four of the rationales originated with the administration of President George W. Bush.

The study also finds that the Bush administration switched its focus from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein early on – only five months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

In addition to what it says about the shifting sands of rationales and the unsteady path to war in Iraq, what is remarkable about the 212-page study is that its author is a student.

The study, “Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress and the Media from September 12, 2001, to October 11, 2002,” is the senior honors thesis of Devon Largio. She and her professor, Scott Althaus, believe the study is the first of its kind.

For her analysis of all available public statements the Bush administration and selected members of Congress made pertaining to war with Iraq, Largio not only identified the rationales offered for going to war, but also established when they emerged and who promoted them. She also charted the appearance of critical keywords such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Iraq to trace the administration’s shift in interest from the al Qaeda leader to the Iraqi despot, and the news media’s response to that shift.

“The rationales that were used to justify the war with Iraq have been a major issue in the news since last year, and Devon’s study provides an especially thorough and wide-ranging analysis of it,” Althaus, a professor of political science, said.

“It is not the last word on the subject, but I believe it is the first to document systematically the case that the administration made for going to war during critical periods of the public debate.

“It is first-rate research,” Althaus said, “the best senior thesis I have ever seen – thoroughly documented and elaborately detailed. Her methodology is first-rate.”

Largio mapped the road to war over three phases: Sept. 12, 2001, to December 2001; January 2002, from Bush’s State of the Union address, to April 2002; and Sept. 12, 2002, to Oct. 11, 2002, the period from Bush’s address to the United Nations to Congress’s approval of the resolution to use force in Iraq.

She drew from statements by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Policy Board member and long-time adviser Richard Perle; by U.S. senators Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Trent Lott and John McCain; and from stories in the Congressional Record, the New York Times and The Associated Press. She logged 1,500 statements and stories.

The rationales Largio identified include everything from the five front-runners – war on terror, prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, lack of weapons inspections, removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Saddam Hussein is evil, to the also-rans – Sen. Joe Lieberman’s “because Saddam Hussein hates us,” Colin Powell’s “because it’s a violation of international law,” and Richard Perle’s “because we can make Iraq an example and gain favor within the Middle East.”

With regard to the administration’s shift from bin Laden to Saddam, Largio found that Iraq was “part of the plan for the war on terror early in the game.”

For example, in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 29, 2002, President Bush declared that Iraq was part of the war against terrorism because it supported terrorists and continued to “flaunt its hostility toward America.” He also claimed that Iraq allowed weapons inspectors into the country and then threw them out, “fueling the belief that the nation did in fact plan to develop weapons of mass destruction,” Largio wrote.

In the same speech, the president called Iraq, Iran and North Korea an “axis of evil,” a phrase that would “ignite much criticism” and add “to the sense that the U.S. would embark on a war with the Hussein state,” Largio wrote.

“So, from February of 2002 on,” Largio said, “Iraq gets more hits than Osama bin Laden. For President Bush the switch occurs there and the gap grows over time.”

Largio also discovered that it was the media that initiated discussions about Iraq, introducing ideas before the administration and congressional leaders did about the intentions of that country and its leader. The media also “brought the idea that Iraq may be connected to the 9-11 incident to the forefront, asking questions of the officials on the topic and printing articles about the possibility.”

The media “seemed to offer a lot of opinion and speculation, as there had been no formal indication that Iraq would be a target in the war on terror,” Largio wrote. Oddly, though, the media didn’t switch its focus to Iraq and Saddam until July of 2002.

Yet, “Overall, the media was in tune with the major arguments of the administration and Congress, but not with every detail that emerged from the official sources.”

“As always, hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Largio wrote in the conclusion to her thesis. “However, there are questions surrounding nearly every major rationale for the war.

“People may wonder, why are our men and women over there? Why did we go to war? Were we misled? In this election year, these questions deserve answers. And though this paper cannot answer these questions definitively, it can provide some insight into the thinking of the powers-that-be during the earliest stages of war preparation and give the American people a chance to answer these questions for themselves.”

Because Largio’s thesis addresses questions of “great public importance,” Althaus said, and “does so in such a detailed manner,” he arranged to have it posted on a public Web site. Largio will graduate on May 16, and will attend law school at Vanderbilt University.

That sure sounds like Bush was accusing Iraq of being involved in 9/11.


Thanks for that link, MellowOne. I've bookmarked it.

Is there an "OR" in there that would include Iraq?

Based on what we know now and what I didn't hear him say before, that does not justify attacking a nation weakened by years of sanctions, like Iraq. It doesn't authorize the "Pre-emptive War" that been the term used for Iraq. It looks like it doesn't justify Bush's war in Iraq at all.

I never heard him specify Iraq was involved in ANY of those actions. I only heard him imply them.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Bush now claims Iraq and 9/11 were NOT connected

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Bush now claims Iraq and 9/11 were connected

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Bush now claims Iraq and 9/11 were Not connected

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Bush now claims Iraq and 9/11 were connected

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Bush now claims Iraq and 9/11 were Not connected

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Bush now claims Iraq and 9/11 were connected

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Ad infinitum

From the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice implications that Iraq and 9/11 were connected, most Americans felt there was a direct connection. Even after WMD weren't found a poll said 60% of Americans still felt Iraq was connected to the 9/11 attacks. If nothing else, they sure marketed the war to look like there was a direct connection.

in his last speech about the elections in Iraq. He never said they were connected??

Bush acknowledged on Friday there was no evidence of such a link.

"There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack of 9/11," Bush said. "I've never said that and never made that case prior to going into Iraq."

eat lots of pretzels.

... but he and his crew said dozens of times that "Iraqi officials had meetings with Mohammad Atta the lead 9/11 hijacker" which turned out not to be true.

You'll probably never get them saying the exact words but you will find hundreds of instances where they carefully tailored their words to convey that exact impression to anyone not going over their words with a magnifying glass and a English professor.

Iraq in the presidental debate I posted above. If you look at Kerry's rebuttal, he thinks Bush was making a connection.



KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, "The enemy attacked us."

Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist.

They outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who only a week earlier had been on the other side fighting against us, neither of whom trusted each other.

That's the enemy that attacked us. That's the enemy that was allowed to walk out of those mountains. That's the enemy that is now in 60 countries, with stronger recruits.

He also said Saddam Hussein would have been stronger. That is just factually incorrect. Two-thirds of the country was a no-fly zone when we started this war. We would have had sanctions. We would have had the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein would have been continually weakening.

If the president had shown the patience to go through another round of resolution, to sit down with those leaders, say, "What do you need, what do you need now, how much more will it take to get you to join us?" we'd be in a stronger place today.