July 7, 2004
Yesterday marked another setback for the Bush administration's ongoing campaign to convince the American people that the war in Iraq was necessary. The chairs of the bipartisan commission investigating 9/11 disputed Vice President Cheney's cryptic statements that he has special intelligence about alleged contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq. The statement comes in response to the vice president's earlier assertion that he "probably" knew more about the alleged link than did the commission.
There was no collaboration between al Qaeda and Iraq prior to 9/11. The 9/11 commission, the U.N. Security Council, and the president's own weapons inspector in Iraq have independently concluded that there was no pre-9/11 collaboration between al Qaeda and Iraq. No matter how many times Cheney repeats it, the truth is clear.
Iraq was a war of choice, not of necessity. To this day, the president and vice president continue to push tenuous "contacts" between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime as hard evidence of substantial collaboration worthy of war. With the collapse of its pre-war claim about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the administration must resort to half-truths and scare tactics about phantom al Qaeda-Saddam links to make its case before an increasingly skeptical public.
The Bush administration increased the threat of terrorist attacks against Americans by invading Iraq on a whim. The Bush administration's diversion of critical resources to Iraq from the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan has made the American public less safe. The administration needs to recognize its errors and explain to Americans how it plans to deal with the resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the new terrorist front the U.S. occupation has created in Iraq.
Center for American Progress.
