Bush's Broken Record

Reacting to calls from congress to end the war in Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a familiar response. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

This is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months and on Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq. Bush's references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, are greatly over simplified.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

NY Times Article