Bush Disavows Hussein-Sept. 11 Link
Administration Has Been Vague on Issue, but President Says No Evidence Found
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A18
President Bush said there has been no evidence that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, disavowing a link that had been hinted at previously by his administration.
"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," the president said yesterday after a meeting at the White House with lawmakers.
In stating that position, Bush clarified an issue that has long been left vague by his administration. On Sunday, Vice President Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that success in Iraq means "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
A Washington Post poll last month found that 69 percent of Americans thought it at least likely that Hussein had a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Polling experts said Americans held that view mostly because of an instinctive suspicion of Hussein, but Democrats and some public opinion experts said Bush and his aides exploited that impression by implying a link.
In his May 1 speech announcing the end of major combat in Iraq, Bush said, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001." He added: "With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
Bush, while seeing no link between Hussein and the attacks, said yesterday that Iraq was linked to Osama bin Laden's terror organization. "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties," he said. Some terrorism experts dispute the extent of those ties, but the ties are not disputed as vigorously as the link between Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday said he had no reason to believe that Hussein had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Sunday, Cheney revived the possibility that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer five months before the attacks, saying, "We just don't know" whether the allegation is true. But an FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting, and the CIA has always doubted it took place.
Cheney, speaking to a meeting of the Air Force Association here yesterday, delivered an impassioned defense of the Bush administration's actions in Iraq, and especially of its strategy of acting preemptively against perceived threats.
"Some people, both in this nation and abroad, have questions about that strategy," Cheney said. "Make no mistake: President Bush is acting to protect the American people against further attacks, even when that means moving aggressively against would-be attackers."
Some analysts have concluded that the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the March invasion has made future preventive actions unlikely.
In a talk to congressional staff members earlier this week, Andrew Krepinevich Jr., the director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the discovery that "there was no imminent danger" from Iraq made it unlikely that Americans would again support such a preventive action.