July 3, 2005

Five Times

One of the greatest feats in the early 21st Century is President Bush's continued success in connecting the unrelated attacks on September 11, 2001, with the former Baathist Iraqi regime or the current struggles in the Iraq war. During his speech of June 28, he tried to do so five more times, although White House press secretery Scott McClellan denied the following day that the president attempted to make this connection.

(Editor's note: While excerpts from President Bush's June 28 speech and The 9/11 Commission Report have been shortened, their meaning and context have not been changed.)

President Bush (43):

1. My greatest responsibility as President is to protect the American people. And that's your calling, as well, he said to a gathering of soldiers at Ft. Bragg, N.C. He went on, The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001. The terrorists who attacked us--and the terrorists we face--murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent.


2. After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy.
   Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington, and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.


3. The lesson of this experience is clear: The terrorists can kill the innocent, but they cannot stop the advance of freedom. The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi, and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden. For the sake of our nation's security, this will not happen on my watch.


4. We have more work to do, and there will be tough moments that test America's resolve. We're fighting against men with blind hatred--and armed with lethal weapons--who are capable of any atrocity. They wear no uniform; they respect no laws of warfare or morality. They take innocent lives to create chaos for the cameras. They are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September the 11th, 2001. They will fail. The terrorists do not understand America. The American people do not falter under threat, and we will not allow our future to be determined by car bombers and assassins.


5. After September the 11th, 2001, I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are prevailing. Our enemies are brutal, but they are no match for the United States of America, and they are no match for the men and women of the United States military.

The 9/11 Commission Report:

• President Bush had wondered immediately after the attack whether Saddam Hussein's regime might have had a hand in it. (Former White House terrorism expert Richard) Clarke has written that on the evening of September 12, President Bush told him and some of his staff to explore possible Iraqi links to 9/11. "See if Saddam did this," Clarke recalls the President telling them. "See if he's linked in any way." While he believed the details of Clarke's account to be incorrect, President Bush acknowledged that he might well have spoken to Clarke at some point, asking him about Iraq.

  Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke's office sent a memo to (then National Security Advisor Condoleezza) Rice on September 18, titled "Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks." Rice's chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda. The memo found no "compelling case" that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. ... Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons.

- Rich