President Bush Dodges Shoes, Not Questions

I have to say I was pretty impressed with President Bush's cat-like reflexes when he dodged the shoes hurled at him by a journalist in Iraq (a sign of the utmost disrespect in that country as we know). That said, I was utterly unimpressed by his answers to questions relating to Al Qaeda in Iraq. It is now common knowledge, and a fact accepted by the Pentagon that Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq until after the US invasion in 2003.



In an interview in Iraq yesterday, President Bush defended the war in Iraq, saying it was "where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand." Raddatz interrupted to point out that al Qaeda was not present in Iraq until after the United States invaded, to which Bush replied dismissively, "Yeah, that's right. So what?"

He continued, "The point is that al Qaeda said they're going to take a stand." In the lead-up to the Iraq war, Bush repeatedly and insistently cited a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. When it turned out those links never existed -- and that the Bush administration may have willingly distorted information to suggest that they did exist -- Bush continued to tie Iraq to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, even as late as 2007.

Rather than take responsibility for the intelligence failures before the war, earlier this month Bush said cynically, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." He has also repeatedly insisted that Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror," using the claim as justification for the war. Yet, as Raddatz points out, al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq until the U.S. invasion. The Bush administration has finally admitted "privately" that "Afghanistan is now the single most pressing security threat in the war on terror."