Bush's totally absurd reasoning:

On ABC World News yesterday, Charlie Gibson interviewed president Bush. There was this exchange: (emp add)

Gibson: I heard you say just yesterday, "The hardest thing I have to do is to get people to understand how Iraq is a critical part of the war on terror."

President Bush: Right.

Gibson: And that's the one thing that I question, whether people do have any sense of that. For loathsome as he may have been, Saddam Hussein was not connected to al Qaeda, and he was not behind 9/11.

Bush: No, I understand that people ask, "How can this be a connection, between the war on terror and," you know, "How can Iraq be a connection when Saddam Hussein didn't order the attacks?" And you know, I understand that concern, because he didn't order the attacks. The enemy, however, believes that Iraq is a part of the war on terror. Osama bin Laden has called Iraq central to the war on terror. And if we lose, if this young democracy fails, the enemy will be emboldened. They will have resources in which to launch attacks. They have declared their desire to have a caliphate throughout the Middle East, and one of their targets is to topple modern governments.

Friends, moderates, reformers across the Middle East will say, "Where was the United States?" And so the stakes are incredibly high here, Charlie, and yes, this is a part of the war on terror. It is a central part of the war on terror.

Gibson: But the point that I make and that many of the critics make is that Iraq wasn't a part of the war on terror until we went in there.

Bush: I think we … (overlap) Gibson: Now because of Iraq, they're being produced, because (crosstalk)

Bush: I … I … listen, I understand it's dangerous and troublesome, but I think it's very important for the American people to ask, "Why, why is it that Osama bin Laden wants to drive us out of Iraq before this democracy can sustain itself?" One reason is they want a launching pad, another launching pad, a safe haven similar to Afghanistan. And the other reason is because Osama bin Laden recognizes that this is an ideological struggle, and the way to defeat an ideology of hate is with an ideology of hope, and that's liberty and democracy.

Some say, "Well, it's impossible for democracy to take hold in the Middle East." Well, that's true if we leave. But the Iraqis themselves have said, "We want to live in a land of liberty, we want to be free," and that's why 12 million people voted.

This … this struggle is akin to the Cold War. And what I'm not going to let happen on my watch, Charlie, is to concede and cede territory to an enemy that wants to hit us again. An enemy that has made their intentions clear — that is, drive the United States out of the Middle East, and the first place to do so is in Iraq: "Let us defeat the forces of reform and moderation, let us have oil from which to punish the West economically, and let us have a weapon of mass destruction." That is their desire, and their goal, and we must not let them succeed. And so absolutely, Iraq is tied to the security of the United States.

Gibson: A very good argument, that you just made for what you did in Afghanistan and what you did in working with the Pakistanis, to go after the Taliban, who were at the center of this, but Iraq was not, until we went in.

Bush: Charlie, I just told you, the president's job is to confront a threat, and … and if … if I can walk you back in history, uh, Saddam Hussein was clearly a threat. He was a sponsor of terror, he was shooting at American airplanes, he had invaded a neighbor, he had killed thousands of his own citizens, he had used weapons of mass destruction. We have learned since that he did not use them, but he had the capacity to use weapons of mass destruction. He was paying for suicide bombers, the families of suicide bombers.

It wasn't just the United States that saw a threat — Republicans and Democrats saw a threat. The international community saw a threat. He was given a last chance, and it was his choice to make.

Presidents don't get do-overs. But I did. … I'm going to make this statement to you: This world is safer and better off without Saddam Hussein in power, and now the challenge is to help the reformers and moderates fight off the extremists in Iraq and develop a … and help a country grow that can defend itself, sustain itself, and govern itself, and will be an ally in the war on terror. Victory in Iraq is a major defeat toward the extremists and the radicals who want to do America harm.=

Bush is saying here:

• I invaded Iraq back then because today, Al Qaeda says it's the place to fight.
• Saddam was a threat.

The first argument is similar to the kind of reasoning you'd hear from a drunk who got into a bar fight:

I hit him first because he returned my punch.

And the second argument is the old 'Saddam is a threat', but now officially detached from 9/11 - which is something Bush did not make clear back in 2003.

But back to the first argument Bush presented, that we went in to Iraq because after the invasion it became a place to fight terrorists. Will that fly with anyone, including Bush supporters? It's so transparently out of sequence.


posted by Quiddity at 9/08/2006 04:09:00 PM