Bush claims al Qaeda controlling terror in Iraq, nobody is buying it

July 24, 2007

Washington, DC - Responding to critics and a government report prepared by his own administration that says that al Qaeda in Iraq is not the same group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush on Tuesday shared intelligence information he claims links the group in Iraq with the central al Qaeda organization.

Charges that al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist until the U.S. "invasion of Iraq and that it's a problem of our own making" are part of the "flawed logic that terror is caused by American actions," Bush said.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq is run by foreign leaders loyal to Osama bin Laden," Bush said. "Like bin Laden, they are cold-blooded killers who murder the innocent to achieve al Qaeda's political objectives.

"Ridiculous statements like that are the reason the Bush administration has lost all credibility. The reports show that al Qaeda has is stronger since he took office and his failed polices are the number one reason" John Conyers said this afternoon.

Critics of the war in Iraq have complained about the Bush administration's insistence that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, saying the war has been a recruiting tool for terrorists. They point out the 9/11 commission found there was no al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

Delusional

John Edwards said last Thursday "The president's remarks today defending his Iraq policy without regard to actual facts border on the delusional," Edwards said in a statement, hours after a Bush press conference. "The president claimed that the same people attacking U.S. troops today are the ones who perpetrated 9/11."

"It must be nice to live in a world where your actions have no consequences," Edwards said. "There was no group called Al Qaeda in Iraq before the president's disastrous mismanagement of the war gave them a foothold, a fact the president flagrantly ignores."

Big lie in May 2003

"Al-Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore. And we'll stay on the hunt. To make sure America is a secure country, the al-Qaeda terrorists have got to understand it doesn't matter how long it's going to take, they will be brought to justice. " - President George Bush

Dick Durbin zero progress in Iraq

"We've been told over and over again we can't expect a military victory in Iraq; it will take a political victory for us to finally see stability," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said at a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday. "And yet, as the benchmark assessment reports tell us, there's little evidence of political progress in Iraq today, and certainly more violence and more death."

Hillary Clinton - "strategy in Iraq is failing"

Hillary Clinton said Bush's report was an attempt to "put the best face on a failed strategy."

"Even the President's own portrait cannot paint over the reality on the ground: our strategy in Iraq is failing," Clinton said in a prepared statement.

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