Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country.Matthews at Vox points out:
Sixty-nine percent in a Washington Post poll published Saturday said they believe it is likely the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda. A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe it's likely Saddam was involved.
The belief in the connection persists even though there has been no proof of a link between the two.
On numerous occasions, Dick Cheney cited a report that 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. He said this after the CIA and FBI concluded that this meeting never took place.
More generally on the question of Iraq and al-Qaeda, on September 18, 2001, Rice received a memo summarizing intelligence on the relationship, which concluded there was little evidence of links. Nonetheless Bush continued to claim that Hussein was "a threat because he’s dealing with al-Qaeda" more than a year later.
“[W]e gave [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power….”This is completely wrong. Hussein did let U.N. weapons inspectors in, and they failed to find any weapons. The administration withdrew them so they could begin the invasion.
“It was on the front page of The Washington Post, but I think what people basically decided was this is just the president being the president. Occasionally he plays the wrong track and something comes out quite wrong. He is under a great deal of pressure.”How to explain that it "came out wrong" again three years later when the world was finally realizing just how thoroughly they'd been taken for fools when he said it again:
And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him.If you want to know why so many people believe that their leaders are liars, look no further than the fact that the George W. Bush administration convinced the nation that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden and had weapons of mass destruction which the two evil-doers were planning to use against Americans. A quarter of million people (and counting) died as a result of those those lies. It's amazing there's any trust in government at all after that.