Cheney:
...during an interview on NBC 's Meet the Press (9/14/03), when Vice President Dick Cheney was asked if he was "surprised" that so many Americans connected Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, Cheney responded:
"No. I think it's not surprising that people make that connection.... You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn't have any evidence of that. We've learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW , that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization."
On NBC 's Meet the Press (12/9/01): "That's been pretty well confirmed that (Atta) did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack."
Bush:
"Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Here are the words of Osama bin Laden: 'This third world war is raging in Iraq. The whole world is watching this war.' He says it will end in victory and glory or misery and humiliation."
By citing bin Laden, Bush raised him to the stature of a foreign leader. But he went further, embracing bin Laden's understanding of the war's dynamics as a crusade. By endorsing bin Laden's notion of a "third world war," the American president lent the prestige of his office to the terrorists' vision. Using bin Laden's statement to justify his own course, Bush legitimated their war.
By mixing 9/11 and Iraq, Bush jumbled the actual logic of cause and effect. In the rush to war, Bush, Cheney & Co. had suggested that Saddam Hussein was allied with terrorists, connecting the dot to 9/11. Now the CIA reports that Iraq has become a terrorist training center only since the failed postwar reconstruction.
...and Bush:
"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the War on Terror."
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