Bush lie: Now says he never connected 911
with Iraq War
Reuters
December 16, 2005
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Friday that he
wrestled for months over the decision to go to war in Iraq but that he remains
convinced it was the right decision.
In the latest in a series of comments in which he has gone further than in
the past to acknowledge heated debate over the war, Bush told PBS in an
interview that he never tried to guess casualty numbers before the March 2003
invasion but said he understood the risks.
"I'll never forget making the decision in the Situation Room, and it
affected me," he was quoted as saying in the transcript of the interview for
"The News Hour with Jim Lehrer."
"I got up out of the chair and walked around the South Lawn there and I
thought, you know, I knew the decision I had just made -- by the way, that I
had been wrestling with for months -- was the right decision," Bush said.
Bush, in a speech on Wednesday, took the blame for going to war over faulty
intelligence but said he was right to topple Saddam Hussein and urged Americans
to be patient.
The Bush administration had emphasized the threat of weapons of mass
destruction as a reason to go to war in Iraq but such weapons were never
found.
Senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, had also warned
before the war of possible links between Hussein's government and the planners
of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Bush acknowledged on Friday there was no evidence of such a link.
"There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack of
9/11," Bush said. "I've never said that and never made that case prior to going
into Iraq."
But he added that he believed the two issues were related even in the
absence of direct ties.
"I think they are related in the war on terror because he (Saddam) had
terrorist connections. Again, he was a sworn enemy and he'd had weapons of mass
destruction, had used them," Bush said.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
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