Still justified?

[Sheeana]

WASHINGTON—U.S. President George W. Bush conceded for the first time yesterday that the United States had no evidence indicating Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Bush made the comment in a brief encounter with reporters at the White House, an apparent bid to answer critics who have accused him of linking the Iraq war and the terrorist attacks to justify an ongoing occupation, which is responsible for mounting American deaths and draining an economy already mired in deficit.

"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with Sept. 11," Bush said.

But he said he had no doubt that the deposed Iraqi president had ties to Al Qaeda, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden. Bush has let the perception that Saddam was somehow involved in the attacks fester for many months, most recently in his televised address to the nation on Sept. 7.

The result has been that seven in 10 Americans think Saddam was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings that killed approximately 3,000 people, a Washington Post poll released earlier this month found.

Bush, in his national plea for $87 billion (U.S.) in additional military and reconstruction funds for Iraq and Afghanistan, said Iraq had become the centre for the war on terrorism. He told Americans it was important to fight the terrorists on their ground before the battleground again became the United States.

"We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength," Bush said, "they are invited by the perception of weakness.

"And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans.

"We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today, so that we do not meet him again on our streets, in our own cities."

Bush's comments came a day after both U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said there was no link between the attacks and Saddam.

It appears to be a concerted effort by the Bush administration to move away from links they have always hinted at, without offering any evidence.

In a television interview Tuesday night, Rice said one of the reasons Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged."

But when she was asked about the poll numbers showing seven in 10 Americans made the connection between Saddam and the terrorist attacks, Rice said: "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."

At a Pentagon briefing Tuesday, Rumsfeld also toed the administration line.

When asked whether he felt Saddam was personally involved in the New York and Washington attacks, he said: "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

Last weekend, however, Vice-President Dick Cheney, in a rare television interview, said stabilizing Iraq would cripple terrorists who "have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

He said he wasn't surprised by the poll results and said he didn't know whether there was a link between Saddam and the terrorist attacks.

"We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s," Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press. "That it involved training, for example, on biological weapons and conventional weapons, that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis provided bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization."

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have cited several links between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 1990s, Associated Press reported.

Documents found April 26 by the Star's Mitch Potter in the bombed headquarters of Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence service refer to an invitation by Saddam's government in 1998 for an Al Qaeda envoy to visit Baghdad

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=968793972154

Sexed up dossiers... Tony Blair in the hot seat... ignored intelligences... suicide... Inquiries... Lack of Weapons of Mass destruction. This topic has certainly been interesting to say the least. So, what are your thoughts now given all that has happened (or hasn't)? Do you still hold the same POV as pre-war? Could things have been done better? (or worse?)