President Bush broke the news last week that there has been "noevidence" that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11,2001, terrorist attacks, putting an end to his administration'searlier speculations that such a link may have existed.
When I heard the news, I wished for a direct line to the OvalOffice so I could have called Bush to ask why it took him so longto come forward with the admission.
For months now, Americans have speculated as to what kind of tieSaddam may have had in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Since the warhas come to an end, and no weapons of mass destruction have beenfound, many of us have concluded there probably never was one.
Yet, up until last Wednesday, members in Bush's administrationhad been lumping the two together, since they began salivating overthe words "war" and "Iraq" last fall.
As recently as two weeks ago, Vice President Dick Cheney toldreporters on NBC's "Meet the Press" that to be successful in Iraqwould mean that "we will have struck a major blow right at theheart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of theterrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but mostespecially on 9/11."
I might have bought the assumption if Cheney had instead beenreferring to a pair of countries further east: Afghanistan andPakistan, where Osama bin Laden is presumed to be hiding along thecountries' borders.
Now, with each day that passes, Bush is getting blasted formistakes people fear his administration may have made in its pushfor this war.
In a scathing interview last week with the Associated Press,Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, one of the 23 senators who opposed theresolution last year that authorized Bush to go to war in Iraq,offered his own take on what led the nation into war.
Kennedy said of Saddam's possible threat that "there was noimminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January tothe Republican leadership that war was going to take place and wasgoing to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."
Regardless of what your opinion may be of the Massachusettssenator, Kennedy brings up a troubling possibility -- that Saddamnever was an imminent threat to the United States and that this warhas been a huge mistake.
Following the terrorist attacks in 2001, we Americans werewilling to believe any country in the Middle East could have hadties to the attacks made on our country. We believed what Bush wastelling us about the dangers of Saddam, and we made presumptionsabout Saddam's involvement because we all knew him to be a horribleleader.
So was it right of us to make those presumptions? Only time willtell, but the reality is that they are what has led us into thiswar -- a war that continues to cost us billions every day whilemaking us more and more hated by Muslim countries in the MiddleEast.
You tell me what is wrong with that picture.
Write to Gail at glkoch@bsu.edu
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