So reports the Washington Post:
“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked,” he told troops at Camp Victory, the largest U.S. military outpost in Baghdad. “And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that.”
He’s right, of course, but it’s interesting that he would say so, since the denial of any connection between Iraq and the global war on terror has been an article of faith among the left.
(Via Althouse.)
UPDATE: There’s a media failure angle to this story as well. The Post claims:
His statement echoed comments made by Bush and his administration, which tried to tie then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. But it put Panetta at odds with Obama, the 9/11 Commission and other independent experts, who have said that al-Qaeda lacked a presence in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
I don’t care about what Obama and “other independent experts” say, but this is wrong as regards the 9/11 Commission, as Aaron Worthing notes. Moreover, even if (counterfactually) al Qaeda did lack a presence in Iraq before 2003, it wouldn’t change the fact that Iraq was a state supporter of terrorism. There are, after all, terrorists other than al Qaeda.
There’s also this:
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday appeared to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq as part of the war against al-Qaeda, an argument controversially made by the Bush administration but refuted by President Obama and many Democrats.
As an Althouse reader points out, “refute” means “disprove”, not merely “contradict”. The Post has since changed “refuted” to “rebutted” (without noting a correction). That’s still a little too strong; usually “rebut” means the same as “refute”. But I suppose “rebuttal” is often used in politics for any counter-statement, whether or not it really rebuts or even addresses the statement.
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