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Posted By: wtnf
Date: 18, September 03, at 9:09 p.m.

Backs away from Cheney remarks, public perception
By Bob Kemper, Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- President Bush declared Wednesday that he has no evidence linking Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, contradicting comments made by Vice President Dick Cheney last weekend and an impression held by a solid majority of Americans.
"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with Sept. 11," Bush said, definitively knocking down a link that Bush's critics charge he and his administration have intimated and benefited from in prosecuting the war on Iraq.
But Bush, whose speeches have for months regularly referred to the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq as key elements of a broader war on terrorism, added, "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties."
In a measure of White House concern over the prospect of another challenge to the administration's case against Iraq, Bush sought to defuse the controversy a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice rejected Cheney's suggestions of an Iraqi role in the attacks.
When asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday about a poll showing that 70 percent of Americans believe Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said, "I think it's not surprising that people make that connection."
He said, "We don't know" if such a link exists. But Cheney referred to Iraq as "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
As possible proof of a connection, the vice president cited an alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta, the Al Qaeda leader of the Sept. 11 strikes, and Iraqi officials in the Czech Republic before the attacks.
"We've never been able to develop any more on that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it," Cheney said.
But Czech officials disputed that story in December 2001 and intelligence officials have said that Atta was actually in the U.S. at the time of the alleged meeting.
Bush offered a modest defense of Cheney on Wednesday while speaking to reporters at the White House, saying the vice president intended only to link Iraq to Al Qaeda, not the attacks. The president said such a link was evident when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Al Qaeda operative, sought sanctuary in Iraq and learned there how to work with biological and chemical weapons.
The flap over Cheney's comments comes when the White House is already on the defensive over accusations--by critics, members of Congress and Democratic presidential contenders--that Bush and his top aides exaggerated the threat Hussein posed to the United States to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Popularity drops
The U.S. failure to find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the chief justification for the invasion, has undercut public support for the president's postwar strategy in Iraq and his popularity overall. Recent public opinion polls show Bush's popularity dipping to pre-Sept. 11 levels.
Against that backdrop, White House officials were eager to shoot down any new threats to Bush's credibility or the administration's case in Iraq.
"We never made that connection," White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded repeatedly to a barrage of questions from reporters Wednesday about Cheney's comments and whether the White House thought Bush benefited from the public misperception of Iraq's involvement.
Rumsfeld, when asked Tuesday about the link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks, said, "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."
Rice, appearing on ABC's "Nightline" Tuesday night, added, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."
The White House has never definitively declared a link between Iraq and Sept. 11. But Bush and other top administration officials have repeatedly suggested a loose connection between the two, saying that because of Sept. 11 the U.S. had to take a more aggressive approach against groups or nations, like Iraq, that pose a potential threat to its security.
Bush now refers to Iraq as the "central front" in the war on terrorism that he launched immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks In making his case for an invasion of Iraq in a nationally televised address last October, Bush said, "We know Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy: The United States of America." Bush said Hussein had been linked to Al Qaeda for a decade, and added that an "alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
'Ally of Al Qaeda'
On May 1, in a speech from the deck of an aircraft carrier in which he declared an end to major combat in Iraq, Bush said, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001--and still goes on."
He added that the war in Iraq "removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
"With those attacks" on Sept. 11, Bush said, "the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
McClellan said the president did not intend to suggest that Iraq was connected to the Sept. 11 attacks. Rather, McClellan said, Bush was underscoring the relationship between Sept. 11 and the United States' new policy of confronting potential threats before attacks occur.
"One of the most dangerous new threats we face in the post-Sept. 11 world is the nexus between outlaw regimes with weapons of mass destruction and terrorists," McClellan said.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune

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