The U.N. is responsible for Bush misleading the American public (according to Andrew Sullivan):

Heard on the Chris Matthews Show, Saturday, 21 September 2003 (most recent transcripts not available, from our transcript of our audio clip - 310kb, which will be deleted after September):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: If the president made the statement he made this week, before we went to war, had said there's no actual connection - any evidence - between what happened to us 9/11 in 2001 and this war with Iraq - no actual particular connection. Would he have been still able to sell the war? Michael.
MICHAEL TOMASKY: Probably, but it would have been a whole lot harder, a whole lot harder, and it would have taken a whole lot longer. And there would've been a lot more debate about it.
HOWARD FEINMAN: I think he would have been able to, and I think he should have done it that way, rather than make it just one on a menu he's now featuring.
BBC REPORTER KATTY KAY: I think he would have been able to sell it, because along side it was a lot of intelligence being put out - a lot of information being put out - which now, in retrospect, has not been corroborated.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: He wanted to sell it that way but the U.N. demanded that he didn't.

ADDENDUM: SullyWatch also weighs in on Andy's appearance, and includes a sartorial suggestion for Sully.

AFTERTHOUGHT: We're pretty sure Sullivan was responding to Matthews' "Would Bush have been able to sell the war if he also said there was no Saddam-9/11 connection?" However, it's possible that Sullivan's "He wanted to sell it that way" was informed by the preceding comment that "there was a lot of information being put out". Being charitable to Andy, one might argue that Sullivan claimed Bush wanted to "sell it" using such information, but the U.N. was averse to that approach. But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. So, after thinking through all the possibilities, we return to our original perspective: Sullivan said Bush wanted to make the case for invading Iraq without invoking "connections" between Saddam and 9/11, but the U.N. demanded that he not do so.

posted by Quiddity at 9/21/2003 10:30:00 PM