http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/11/AR2007091102316.html?nav=rss_politics9/11 Linked To Iraq, In Politics if Not in Fact
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; Page A01
The television commercial is grim and gripping: A soldier who lost both legs in an explosion near Fallujah
explains why he thinks U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq.
"They attacked us," he says as the screen turns to an image of the second hijacked airplane heading toward
the smoking World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "And they will again. They won't stop in Iraq."
Every investigation has shown that Iraq did not, in fact, have anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. But
the ad, part of a new $15 million media blitz launched by an advocacy group allied with the White House,
may be the most overt attempt during the current debate in Congress over the war to link the attacks with Iraq.
snip
Feingold pressed Crocker, who has served as ambassador in Pakistan, to say whether the hunt for radicals in
Afghanistan and Pakistan or the campaign in Iraq was more important to defeating al-Qaeda.
Crocker would not choose. "Fighting al-Qaeda in Pakistan is critically important to us," he said. "Fighting al-Qaeda
in Iraq is critically important to us."