Broder touted Bush "conviction" that "preeminent mission was to Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 19:08:03 -0400

Broder touted Bush "conviction" that "preeminent mission was to combat the forces behind" 9-11

http://mediamatters.org/items/200705210008

In his May 20 column, Washington Post columnist David Broder wrote that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings "armed" President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "with a conviction that their preeminent mission was to combat the forces behind those assaults." Broder, however, offered no explanation as to how the Iraq war fit into Bush's "preeminent mission" to "combat the forces behind" the 9-11 attacks. Indeed, in past columns, Broder challenged the Bush administration's suggestions of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda and postulated that Bush may have resolved to remove Saddam Hussein from power before 9-11.

In his May 20 column, Broder wrote:

The 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and the 7/7 London subway and bus bombings shook both Bush and Blair from any sense of complacency and armed both men with a conviction that their preeminent mission was to combat the forces behind those assaults. Both men now believe -- no, are passionately and permanently convinced -- that the terrorist threat from radical Islamists is one that must be resisted at all costs.

However, in his December 7, 2003, column, Broder quoted Louis Fisher of the Congressional Research Service challenging the administration's linkages of Iraq and Al Qaeda:

Louis Fisher, the authority on congressional-executive relations at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, is one who argues that the failure was not personal but institutional. While joining those who challenge the intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the preemptive attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, Fisher is even more critical of the lawmakers who sanctioned the action.

In the fall issue of Political Science Quarterly, he writes: "Month after month, the administration released claims that were unproven" about weapons of mass destruction and links between Iraq and al Qaeda. "For its part, Congress seemed incapable of analyzing a presidential proposal and protecting its institutional powers."

In a July 18, 2004, column, Broder wrote that the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq had "blow[n] a huge hole in Bush's claim that war was required to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and sever an alliance between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda." As Media Matters for America has noted, the Senate report concluded: "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship." As Media Matters has noted, a separate Senate Intelligence Committee report released September 8, 2006, thoroughly debunked the claim that there was a connection between the government of Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

In his March 18, 2003, column -- written on the eve of the invasion of Iraq -- Broder wrote: "When historians have access to the memos and the diaries of the Bush administration's insiders, it's likely they will find that President Bush set his sights on removing Saddam Hussein from power soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- if not before." Broder also wrote: "Skeptics may argue that the United States has yet to produce convincing evidence of a link between the Baghdad regime and the al Qaeda terrorists. But the link exists in the mind of the commander in chief, and he is prepared to act on that conviction."

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