http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/25/bush_reacts/George W. Bush began and ended his speech with a brazen lie. He claimed that the United States is in Iraq to fight al-Qaida.
Before the war, Bush, Cheney and the neoconservatives did all they could to convince the American people that there was some link between Saddam Hussein's tyranny in Iraq and al-Qaida. They succeeded in deceiving a large number of Americans. Now Bush is trying the same trick again. He is trying to justify his failed and unnecessary war in Iraq by parading, once again, the corpses of those murdered by Osama bin laden and his followers in New York, Washington and Bali. The shamelessness of George W. Bush is matched only by his contempt for the intelligence of the American people.
Near the beginning of his address, the president claimed: "Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror." The United States must prevail in Iraq to deny "the terrorists" a "base of operation" -- a reference to al-Qaida, presumably, with its need for bases for worldwide operations. As if to underline the implication that Iraq, like Afghanistan, had been a "base" for al-Qaida, Bush said: "This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power."
Bush repeated this lie at the end of his address. He accurately described al-Qaida as totalitarian and seeking to impose Taliban-like regimes throughout the Middle East. But then, with breathtaking cynicism, he linked the U.S. war in Iraq to al-Qaida once again, following a recitation of al-Qaida attacks in Tunis and Bali with a recitation of places in Iraq where American soldiers now are fighting and dying...
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