A Tangled Web

The hard part of rewriting history is getting your story straight. By now, most Americans realize that Saddam Hussein was not involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, although this certainly wasn't the case a few years ago.

To make the rewrite of history complete, however, it's important to "erase" the idea that the Bush administration ever implied that Saddam Hussein was involved. George Bush got the ball rolling in a speech to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy last December:

"It is true, as I have said many times, that Saddam Hussein was not connected to the 9/11 attacks. But the decision to remove Saddam from power cannot be viewed in isolation from 9/11."

This is a good start. I especially like the part about the "many times" he's made this statement. But it falls short of saying that he never said there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11.

For that we had to wait for former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose a couple of days ago:

ROSE: But you didn’t believe it had anything to do with 9/11
RICE: No. No one was arguing that Saddam Hussein somehow had something to do with 9/11.
ROSE: No one.
RICE: I was certainly not. The President was certainly not. … That’s right. We were not arguing that.



The puzzled look on her face is a nice touch; kind of like saying "where did you ever get such a ridiculous idea?" By now, you may even be wondering how you ever came up with idea that Saddam was involved in 9/11. Could it have been the left wing media?

It would take too long to list the statements that might have led you astray, but you can sort through the collection of misleading statements found on the website, "Iraq on the Record" and find a few.

Still, the rewrite of history is going along pretty well, except former press secretary Ari Fleischer apparently didn't get the memo that they're not using the fictitious Saddam story anymore. On MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews last week, Fleischer made it very clear that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attack:

"After September 11th having been hit once how could we take a chance that Saddam might strike again? And that's the threat that has been removed and I think we are all safer with that threat removed."

Like I said, the hard part is getting your story straight