Rice: Iraq is all about al Qaeda

Although Bush recently deferred to reality and acknowledged that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, other administration officials are still finding it politically useful to define the war in terms of al Qaeda. This isn't new, but the administration's two stances are more visibly at odds. This isn't about double speak, intentionally vague language or weasel words. The president is saying one thing while the Secretary of State and vice president are saying the opposite-- more than three years after the invasion. The question is why the press is just taking it in stride. It might be business as usual for this White House, but it's pretty shocking in historical terms. For those paying attention, it's clear that not only were Iraq and al Qaeda not collaborating, but there was plenty of animosity between the secular regime and the religious extremists-- just as you'd expect.

Rice, giving a series of interviews ahead of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, brushed aside a recently released US intelligence report saying there was no evidence Saddam's regime was helping Al-Qaeda obtain such arms.

"There were ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda," she said on Fox News Sunday.

Rice specifically linked Al-Qaeda's presumed leader in Iraq at the time, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to the effort to develop chemical arms.

"We know that Zarqawi was running a poison network in Iraq," she said, reaffirming statements made by President George W. Bush and herself prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq linking Baghdad with Osama bin Laden's group.

Rice stood by the claim Sunday despite a February 2002 report from the Defense Department's intelligence arm which was just released by a Senate Committee and stated that Iraq was "unlikely to have provided Bin Laden any useful (chemical or biological) knowledge or assistance."

"That particular report I don't remember seeing," Rice said when asked if she and Bush had not ignored the assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Of course, with recent polls showing that an alarming number of Americans incorrectly believe that Saddam had ties to al Qaeda, possessed WMDs, etc., banking on that ignorance might be the best hope for Republicans leading up to the elections. It just isn't the sort of government you expect to see in the United States.

Even that last statement is mind-boggling. Rice is actually using her own ignorance as a justification for the invasion. You'd think the Secretary of State would have access to a range of information-- you know, to weigh options before committing to war. Instead we have another "lying or incompetent" moment.